


Heaven Can't Wait

by omgbubblesomg



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (not the good kinds), Assisted Suicide, Bestiality, Bottom Dean, Choking, Collars, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dean Whump, Electricity, Fandom Loves Puerto Rico, First Time, Flogging, Forced Incest, Forced wincest, Fuck Or Die, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt and then comfort much much later, Loss of Grace, M/M, Minor Ruby/Sam Winchester, Multi, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Other, Past Dean/Other(s), Sex Curse, Spanking, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Whipping, gratuitous whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-05-10 04:37:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omgbubblesomg/pseuds/omgbubblesomg
Summary: If hurting Dean isn't enough to break Cas, then Heaven can always force Sam to help. And if eventhatdoesn't work, well... there are other tools in Heaven's arsenal.Very dark fic, please mind the tags!





	1. Sam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metarachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metarachel/gifts).



> Set sometime before season 13 because that’s when I started writing it and _yes_ it takes me that long to finish things. ~~And I'm not even finished yet oh god.~~ This is a for the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico Charity Auction and it’s only… 7 months late. [Metarachel](rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com) bought my first fic and requested a capturefic with all her kinks squished in. (For those of you who don’t know Rachel please for the love of god read the tags.) I'm _so_ excited to share this monstrosity with you all.
> 
> Even though this is technically a giftfic Rachel was also basically a beta but _a really bad beta_ because she kept finding new ways to fit in more terrible awful delicious things. Thanks also to [hazel](hazeldomain.tumblr.com) for offering initial thoughts on the first draft and [silver](silver9mm.tumblr.com) for her ruthless use of the delete button. All remaining mistakes are my own!

 

 

Dean’s wordless shout drags Sam out of sleep and he fumbles for the knife beneath his pillow before his eyes are even open.

There is no knife.

Or pillow.

There isn’t even a bed. He’s lying on cold concrete. He jerks upright so fast he only narrowly avoids a collision with Cas’s nose.

“Cas, what the, what are you—” He takes in the rest of the room: a small concrete cell with no windows or doors. And there, right in the centre, is Dean. Naked and hanging from a noose that’s chained to the ceiling. Sam’s on his feet before Cas can finish telling him to “Stay calm.”

“Dean!” He lunges forward but he’s brought up short when something around his own neck yanks tight. He staggers, just out of reach. Dean’s eyes are wide and he’s staring at Sam helplessly. There’s a metal band around his neck, attached to the ceiling with a too-short chain that’s keeping Dean on his toes. Sam can’t see Dean’s hands but they must be restrained too, because they’re behind Dean’s back instead of where Sam expects them, attacking the chain and collar. “Dean, what—?” There’s something in between Dean’s teeth, maybe metal, maybe plastic. Held in place by a strap tightened around the back of his head and through the chain, forcing Dean to keep his chin up with his lips pulled back into an involuntary smile. Sam tries to reach him again but his fingers are just shy of Dean’s shoulder. “Dean! What the… how did… _are you okay_?”

Dean’s lips move but whatever he’s trying to say comes out garbled, and spit dribbles out of his mouth where he’s unable to keep it in. Sam falls back, helpless. He’s got his own collar, identical to Dean’s, but where Dean’s is connected to the ceiling, Sam’s is attached to the furthest wall, right next to Cas’s.

“Cas! What the hell! What’s going on? How did—”

Cas holds up his hands. “Please, Sam. Try to remain calm.”

 _“Calm!”_ They’re chained up in a concrete cell. Sam’s no idiot, he knows exactly where this type of situation leads. Some monster has gotten the drop on them and Dean’s going to pay the price. He tugs on the metal around his neck and finds there’s no give to it. It’s slender but heavy and there are no catches or joins. He wraps his fist around the chain and sets his foot against the wall, heaving it backward. The base is buried in the concrete and it’s clear it’s not going anywhere. Maybe if he were stronger. If he had a better angle, or more weight. He pulls anyway, just to be sure. Eventually Cas puts a hand on his shoulder and he drops down, scrubbing his face. “Shit, Cas. What the _hell_ is going on?”

“We appear to be Heaven’s prisoners.”

“Can you get us free?”

“It appears that my grace has been almost completely drained.”

“Fuck.” Sam shivers and rubs his arms. Dean makes a noise, a soft little grunt that could be anything—an idea, a curse, or just an unconscious sound—and it’s second nature that has Sam unbuttoning his over-shirt, awkwardly tugging it off with the chain getting in the way. Dean’s swaying slightly as he tries to keep his balance, precariously poised on his toes. At the limit of his chain Sam can almost reach him, and he clumsily tosses the shirt across Dean’s shoulders. Dean can’t shrug it into place, but it provides a modicum of privacy, if nothing else, and it’s worth it when Dean blinks at him gratefully. “Okay,” Sam says, taking a deep breath. “Okay, let’s think this through. What do we know. Cas? Where are we?”

“We’re in Heaven.” Cas looks around. “The prison. Or at least, the physical manifestation of the prison.”

“Very clever,” comes a cool voice, and a door appears in the far wall behind Dean. A woman walks through it. She’s wearing a grey pantsuit and if the unoriginal outfit choice hadn’t given her away, the careful coif and righteous sneer would have done the job just fine. She’s clearly an angel.

“Puriel,” Cas growls, lowering his chin.

“Castiel. So good of you to join us.”

“You know very well that I am not here of my own volition. Release us.”

She smiles thinly at him. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Not until I get what I need.”

The corner of Cas’s lip pulls back. “I won’t do anything for you,” he promises darkly.

“I’m aware,” she says coldly, “but you’re not the one I came for.” She turns to Sam.

“I won’t help you either,” he snaps.

“Oh but it’s not me that you’ll be helping.” She puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and flicks off the shirt that Sam had just thrown there. “It’s your brother.”

“Get off him,” Sam growls. “I swear to God—”

“There is no God,” she interrupts. “Only me.” She pushes Dean gently, making him lose his balance. He chokes, and his toes scrabble against the floor until he finds the same position as before. She pushes him again.

“Stop it!” Sam’s fists are balled up like he’s ready to fight, even though she’s well out of reach. She looks at him dispassionately and pushes Dean again, then kicks his feet out when he finds equilibrium. Sam’s shirt is discarded on the floor and Dean carefully tries to ball it up beneath his toes to give himself a fraction of an inch more room. Already the skin around his neck looks pink and raw.

“What do you want?” Sam rasps. He’ll make a deal if he has to. He’s made deals for Dean’s life before.

Puriel directs her thin smile at him. “I have a task for you,” she says. “I need an angel resurrected.”

Cas snaps to attention. “That’s sacrilege! To revive a fallen—” Puriel clicks her fingers and Cas breaks off with a groan, clutching his stomach and folding to his knees.

“I don’t know how to resurrect an angel,” Sam urges.

She arches an eyebrow. “I believe you.” She scratches her fingers through Dean’s hair and smirks. “But your angel puppy does. By our count he’s been restored no less than three times.” She lets go of Dean and steps close, lowering her voice. “Your job, Samuel, is to retrieve the necessary information for another revival. Understand?”

“There’s no spell!” Cas gasps from the floor. “God raised me!”

“Lies,” Puriel hisses. “God left us, and if you don’t provide the spell I will destroy your favourite human.”

“Dean was in Hell for forty years!” Cas struggles to his feet, fists clenched. “Do you really think Heaven can best the work of demons?”

She smiles coldly. “I don’t think we’ll have to,” she tells them. “Alastair was a true torturer, yes, but what I have planned is far more… intimate. And you have your pet’s brother to worry about.”

Sam launches himself at her, snarling. But he goes right through the air that she’s no longer occupying, and the collar snaps him back.

She reappears on the other side of Dean. “I’m going to hurt your brother now,” she tells him from over Dean’s shoulder. “And I’m not going to stop until you get what I need.” She raises her hand. She’s holding a thin wooden paddle and Sam doesn’t know what to make of the fact that he’s seen things like that before. In the websites Dean leaves open on his laptop. It’s an instrument designed for pleasure, not pain, and his confusion must show on his face because Dean makes a noise that sounds like a question, and Sam remembers that he can’t see what she’s holding.

“She… she’s going to hit you,” he says, hating himself. “But it’s… it shouldn’t be too bad, Dean. It’s just a… like a paddle.”

Dean grunts, and his shoulders twist as though he’s trying to move his arms. Puriel smirks at Sam again. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says. “I think it’ll hurt him plenty.” Then she swings her arm, so fast it’s just a blur, and the crack of it landing on exposed skin is louder than Sam thought would be possible. Dean grunts past the metal in his mouth and loses his footing, and when Puriel raises her hand again Sam turns desperately to Cas.

“Cas! Do you know a spell? Anything?” Puriel swings again and this time Sam follows the path of her hand. She must be aiming for Dean’s ass because his body swings out from the hips when the paddle lands.

“There is no such spell,” Cas says, aiming the answer at Puriel. “Nothing can revive an angel’s grace once it has been destroyed. Puriel, this is lunacy!”

“You’re not trying very hard,” Puriel tells Sam, and she snaps her fingers. The paddle glows in her hand, and ridges appear along its surface.

“There’s no spell!” Sam cries. “He doesn’t know! There’s nothing to—”

The paddle descends again, and this time when it strikes, the _crack_ of it is drowned out by Dean’s shout. Sam’s distantly aware that his neck hurts and it’s only when Cas hauls him backwards that he realises he’d thrown himself at his brother. She strikes again, and again. Dean grunts each time, eyes scrunched up and jaw clenching hard on the thing between his teeth.

Puriel could snap her fingers and make Dean’s insides curdle, but instead she’s hitting him, hurting him. Making it loud. Making it _visceral_. Sam’s stomach clenches because he knows, he _knows_ why she’s doing it this way. She had said so herself. To make it _intimate._ Sam’s not blind, he’s seen the chemistry between his brother and best friend for years now. He knows they haven’t done anything about it, what with the world always ending and the hunts always escalating and their lives just one disaster after another. But if _he_ has seen it, then the angels must have seen it, too. And they’re using it to hurt them. They’re using it to _taunt_ Cas.

The paddle descends again and Sam winces. “Dean, I can’t, I can’t stop it.” _Thwack. Thwack._ Dean’s legs give out from under him. He chokes as he struggles to recover his footing, but when he does he only manages one wheezing breath before Puriel strikes and he falls again.

“You’ll choke him!” Sam cries, but Puriel doesn’t even slow down. Dean twists in the sliver of room he’s been allowed, trying to protect the parts of him that are most vulnerable. He lifts a foot to shield the back of his thigh but Puriel hits that, too, and from Dean’s shout she must break something there. He drops his foot back to the ground but his weight is tilted onto the other side, giving him even less room to move when she hits him again, throwing him off balance.

Minutes pass like this and his skin goes grey at his temples and around his lips and Sam’s mind skitters away from all that that entails. “Stay awake,” he begs. Dean keeps taking his weight into the collar, trying to turn, trying to avoid the strikes, but they just land on whatever new area he exposes. The next one hits the soft fleshy part of his midriff and he screams.

“Puriel!” Cas shouts at Sam’s side. “Puriel, end this! Let them go!”

She drops her hand, and the rain of _crack_ s halts. Dean laboriously gets his feet beneath him and in the silence Sam can hear each wet-rattling breath in his throat. They’re both shaking, but Sam is trembling with rage and impotent fear, and Dean is merely trembling, exhausted and sweaty.

 _Lay him down,_ Dad’s voice tells him from some distant past. _Get him warm. Make him drink._

Sam’s breathing way too fast, almost in shock himself, but his brain reengages just as Puriel grabs for his hair, yanking him up to shake him like a ragdoll. “Don’t wander off,” she spits. “You have a job to do, remember?”

“There’s no spell,” he rasps. “You can’t do it.”

“There is, and we will,” she snarls. The paddle in her other hand glows, and the ridges become pointed nubs, raised and vicious.

“Don’t!” Sam begs, trying to grab her arm, but his fingers go straight through her and she stalks back to Dean’s limp, twitching body. She spins him roughly, and Sam gets one last brief glimpse of Dean’s eyes—wide and wet—before he’s faced with the damage that she’s inflicted. Dean’s arms are tied together at the small of his back so each hand is gripping an elbow. Everything below his forearms is red and bruised and swollen. There are lines of blood where the ridges have cut the skin, and there’s something shiny and terrible about the bruising on Dean’s side that makes Sam think of broken bones and internal bleeding and all the delicate organs that are in that part of the body. He reaches out, even though he knows he’ll never connect.

“Don’t,” he begs again, but Puriel has already raised her arm, and she swings it down in a practiced arc, right against the crease where Dean’s ass becomes his thigh. Dean screams again, jolting forward, and when Puriel pulls back Sam can see the bruised prints of the pointed nubs. As he watches, blood starts to prick to the surface, but Puriel doesn’t wait for it. She swings the paddle again, onto the other side, and Dean’s scream is broken by the collar cutting off his air.

Sam’s fingers are tangled in the chain, and he’s tugging, pulling, trying to get a hand in between his neck and the collar, trying to find a weak link. He can barely see Cas doing the same thing, both of them desperate. Puriel continues to rain down against Dean’s ass and thighs and the tender skin behind his knees. Each strike is accompanied by a scream until, quite suddenly, there’s only silence.

Puriel spins Dean back around and Sam strains at his collar, begging for Dean to look at him, but Dean’s face is vacant and so fucking pale and Sam can see each freckle in stark contrast to his skin.

“Dean!” he calls. “Dean! Stay awake!” He knows what shock can do to the body but he can’t believe that this could quite possibly be where his brother actually dies. Dean’s chest is rising in tiny, sharp little breaths, and Sam turns desperately to Puriel. “Stop!” he shouts. “This will kill him!”

“I want the spell,” Puriel says, cold and inflectionless, and then she raises the paddle again. When it lands something sinister cracks and Dean’s legs aren’t holding him up anymore. There’s no blood in his cheeks, which makes the blue tinge to his lips even worse. Sam’s screaming, maybe Dean’s name, maybe his own, maybe just a wordless shriek. Cas has his hand raised and he’s chanting something that sounds like a slapdash conglomeration of Enochian and informal Latin. Maybe he’s making up a spell on the fly, something that doesn’t need grace, or maybe he’s swearing. Sam can’t even turn away to see. Puriel stares at them, not breaking eye contact as she raises her hand again. Sam’s screaming and screaming and _screaming_ until suddenly his voice breaks away into nothing and his mouth is still open but there’s no sound coming out anymore.

Puriel swings in slow motion, still too fast, and the jerk of Dean’s body is entirely kinetic. His toes brush Sam’s shirt where it’s lying on the ground. He’s limp and vacant and _gone_ and Sam is pressed so far forward he can’t get a breath past his own collar. Cas is frozen next to him, one hand still raised and so pale that Sam crazily thinks that maybe he’s stopped breathing, too.

Puriel walks around Dean’s body and Sam trips over his own feet, clumsy in his desperation. He reaches out for her, to grab her throat, or her arm, or maybe just that awful grey suit, but his hands go straight through her and she levels a cold smile at him.

“Did you get what I need?” she asks him, and his legs give out.

“There’s no spell,” he whispers from his knees. “You can’t do it. God brought Cas back. Please. De— Let me—”

She slaps him across the face, hard enough to throw his head to the side. “Do you think your brother is safe?” she hisses. “Do you think Death will take him? From here? He has barely crossed the veil, and I will bring him back and kill him as many times as it takes until you get the spell.” She slaps him again and his vision goes patchy. “This place is hidden, even from Heaven. No one will ever find you. No one will ever _save_ you. Not until you give me what I need!” She hits him again and this time he flies across the room, slamming into the wall next to the place where the chain is buried. The back of his head ricochets off the concrete and he slides down. Distantly, he hears someone yell for him, and it’s Dean’s voice, but that can’t be real. That can’t be…

When he blinks the darkness out of his eyes it’s not Puriel’s face he sees. It’s Cas. Two Cas’s. He blinks again and they coalesce.

“ _Cas,_ ” he gasps. “She killed him. She… she killed… Dean’s… He can’t…”

Cas bundles him up. “Don’t look,” he begs. “Sam, your brother is alive but please, please. Don’t look.”

There’s a _crack,_ and Dean’s voice yells out. Another crack.

Sam barely feels the wound on the back of his head. Barely tastes the copper of his own blood in his mouth. He pushes at Cas groggily, and then with more urgency. Cas is usually stronger than he is but right now Sam is desperate, and Cas doesn’t know how to use his body without grace. Sam shoves until Cas’s grip loosens, and when Sam looks around Dean is alive, kicking out as Puriel draws back her arm to strike him with a thin wooden cane. There are angry parallel marks right up his legs, and the next one hits Dean across the top of his cock where he hasn’t managed to shield it between his thighs.

There’s a low, inhuman sound, and it takes Sam a moment to realise that it’s coming from him.

They’re in Heaven. Dean can’t die. Not for real.

But.

He can be tortured.

“ _Cas,_ ” he moans. The cane cracks down again, again. Up his belly, then his chest, then once across the sensitive skin at the base of his throat. Dean shouts out with it and there’s nothing, not a single goddamn thing, that Sam can do about it.

Puriel pauses to spin Dean around, and Sam collapses back against the wall when he sees the damage there, too.

He haltingly tries for reason. “If there was a spell for angel resurrection, don’t you think we would have used it by now? To bring back Balthazar? Or Gabriel? There’s nothing that—” Her fist connects with his face again, and he spins away, shaking his head just in time to see her stalk back to where Dean is red-striped and trembling.

“Don’t,” Sam begs at the same time as Dean mumbles something that might be the same word. Cas holds his shoulder and tries to turn him away, so he can’t watch. Sam fights him. He doesn’t want to see, really he doesn’t. But it’s not a choice. He _has to._ That’s his brother.

When she pauses he tries begging. Bargaining. Offers other spells. Other weapons. She ignores him, kicks him away.

The cane glows and elongates, going soft until Puriel is left holding the black handle of a leather whip. There’s a knot at one end with a thin metal spike, and Sam doesn’t need a creative imagination to guess at the kind of damage she’s going to be able to cause with that.

The whip lashes out and Sam falls forward, backward, down. It’s agony of the worst kind, knowing he’s helpless.

He barely registers his fists hitting the floor, the collar, the wall where his chain is buried. A finger breaks and he doesn’t stop. Can’t. He barely registers Cas’s voice, either, or the gentle hands on his arms, trying to pull him away. There are thin-running rivers of blood and chunks of missing flesh along Dean’s back, and Puriel isn’t stopping. She doesn’t tire. Just raises her arm and slashes it down on a fresh section of skin, pulling screams from Dean’s body as surely as she’s pulling blood. The raised welts from the cane split open under the whip’s pressure.

It ends the same way. Dean’s screams give way to silence and trembling and sharp, panting breaths as his body goes into shock. There’s not enough blood getting to his brain and his skin goes grey and vacant.

Sam loses track of his own body, and time must pass though he can’t say how, or why, or in what direction. Puriel takes periodic breaks to ask him for the spell and he can’t even try to reason with her. He’s begging. Begging. Dean’s hanging bloodied and still only a few feet away. Dead. _Dead._ Sam tries to cling to her sleeves. Tries to make her stay, but she pushes him away in disgust and his fingers slip through her as if she’s only a mirage. He begs with the memory of her. But she’s not listening. She’s facing Dean’s body again. Pressing two fingers to his forehead until his still chest expands on a gasp that shouldn’t be real. She heals him enough for Sam to feel both relief and horror. This is never going to end.

She’s holding an honest-to-god flogger and there’s some hysterical part of him that pictures her in a sex shop, choosing items with that calm cold face. Planning the best way to hurt his brother.

Dean shouts his name past the bit and time must pass again because the flogger is gone and there’s something stuck on the skin of Dean’s thighs, his chest, the underside of his arms. She’s hooked him up to a current and turned it up way too far and Sam _knows_ what electricity through the heart does. He wants to claw out his own eyes to stop himself from watching the way Dean’s body writhes like it’s not his anymore. Every muscle spasms and his legs kick out and fall loose with frightening frequency. Dean isn’t even screaming anymore. He’s gasping and choking and coughing on his own blood and the electricity inside him is furious and alive.

He dies, and lives, and dies again.

Sam can’t pinpoint the moment that he spins around, but he slowly becomes aware that he’s no longer attacking the wall, or his collar, or the chain. He’s still punching, still thrashing, but whatever he’s hitting is soft. The world greys out and his fists are flying and it’s not concrete, it’s Cas beneath him. His shirt is ripped open and Sam is whaling down on him, no lucidity, no strategy. Open-palmed punches that are no less brutal for their lack of finesse. One of Cas’s eyes is bruised shut. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Tell her!” he’s screaming. “Tell her! Tell her!”

“There’s no spell!” Cas is yelling back, trying to protect his face. “Sam! Wake up! There’s no spell!”

He looks up and Dean is dead again, again, a ragged hole where his belly should be and blood down his face and thighs. Sam falls back on his ass and Cas pushes away, to the other side of the cell, clutching his arm and staring at Sam with such unmasked grief that for a moment the world goes sideways.

“There’s no spell,” Cas says again, quieter. “Sam, you surely… you know I wouldn’t keep it from you, if it existed.”

“I know,” Sam rasps back. And it’s true. He believes Cas. Never doubted his certainty. But Dean’s died eight times now and his stomach heaves on nothing, bringing bile and bubbles of air up that he chokes on until he spits into his own lap. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, exhausted and shaking. “I’m sorry, Cas. Cas.”

Puriel _tsks_ as she stalks towards them, and she’s done it so many times already that it’s almost familiar when she grabs his hair and shakes him. “You’re not doing your job,” she hisses.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get better soon Rachel. You owe us post-alexio Feels and we can't cash in if you're buggered.
> 
> [Here's the tumblr link](https://omgbubblesomg.tumblr.com/post/174146457926/heaven-cant-wait-omgbubblesomg-supernatural) if you want to tell all your friends about this fic ;)  
> Kudos and comments heartily appreciated


	2. Cas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me, Castiel, is it true what they say about how deep your depravity goes? Did you debase yourself with these humans?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in answer to some concerns, the tags cover up to about chapter seven-ish, and then i'll update them as required. I couldn't in good faith _not_ tag half the things I know are going to happen. 
> 
> Rachel hasn't recovered enough to read her post-surgery fic collection yet. I can only assume that the first chapter wasn't adequate to appease the whump gods, and obviously the only way to rectify this is to make it _worse._
> 
> Thanks again to beta [silver9mm](silver9mm.tumblr.com).
> 
> obligatory reminder to check the tags.

Puriel _tsks_ as she grabs Sam’s hair and even though Castiel knows he can’t hurt her, he wants to try. Like Sam. Battering his fists against anything in range. “You’re not doing your job,” she says, sneering at Sam who looks back at her with such helpless fury that for a moment Castiel is sure she’ll flinch.

Behind them both, Dean swings gently. He’s not dead, not quite. She’s one of the angels of death and she’s using Heaven’s hold to keep him here instead of slipping away. But the blood. That’s real. Something slippery and wet—intestines, maybe—has spilled out from his stomach, and the bruises from Sam’s fists are not the same kind of pain as that caused by the sight of Dean’s organs, glistening in the open air.

“There’s no spell,” he breathes, but he knows before he says it that she’s not going to believe him.

She turns to him. “Perhaps we picked the wrong brother.” Her fingers drum against her thigh. Her other hand is clenched in Sam’s hair. “It _is_ the older Winchester that made you fall, is it not?”

Castiel tightens his fists and pictures his blade through her chest. There’s blood in his mouth. His own. “Sometimes falling is the right thing to do.”

“Your fall led to the death of countless soldiers,” she snaps. “Good angels. Hester. Uriel. Even Raphael. And it’s your _duty_ to bring them back.”

“I don’t know how.” He looks her dead in the eye, though the effect is perhaps lost with one side of his face still bruised. “I swear to you, Puriel. There is nothing that can do what you are asking. But release the Winchesters, and I will stay in Heaven and help as you see fit. If there _is_ a spell, I will help you find it.”

“Cas, don’t!”

Puriel barks a solitary laugh and shakes Sam, pulling him up, drawing him onto his knees. “You mean release the only two humans to ever break a soul out of Heaven? Release them so they can find a way to free you?” She twists her hand cruelly and Sam reaches up to grip her wrist, trying to alleviate the pressure. His fingers go right through her. “Unlikely, Castiel. You will tell me how to resurrect Raphael and the others, or you will spend eternity here, watching your humans die.”

Castiel doesn’t require oxygen, but his vessel shudders it in anyway, an instinctual reaction. He fights the urge to collapse backwards and bury his face in his hands. Dean is swinging limply behind Puriel’s back. Sam’s shirt is still beneath him, slowly reddening. “Please,” he tries, swallowing whatever’s rising in his throat. “Please don’t.”

Sam yelps as she pulls him up even higher. “Maybe it’s the younger Winchester we need to focus on,” she muses. “Tell me, Castiel, is it true what they say about how deep your depravity goes? Did you debase yourself with these humans?”

He’s surging forward before he even realises he’s going to attack. A denial burning his tongue. How dare she assume—

Puriel isn’t truly corporeal but that doesn’t stop him from swinging at her. It’s a human rage. Violent for all that it’s ineffectual. Her body loses solidity everywhere that he touches, remaining steadfast only in the hand that is still holding Sam on his knees. Castiel tires himself quickly, his rage leaving as swiftly as it had arrived.

“Are you done?” she asks, smirking, and Castiel realises that she’s enjoying herself.

“Let him go,” he begs, and he’s gesturing at Sam but she knows that he means Dean, too.

“You know, I don’t think that I will.” She shakes her hand and Sam shakes with her, clutching for a handhold in the wall behind him.

“Cas! Don’t let her get into your head!”

“You lust for their bodies, Castiel, I can see it in you.”

“I don’t—” Castiel says, and his denial is too strong. Transparent. “I would never—” But he’s not looking at her anymore. His eyes have wandered automatically to Sam’s and Sam sees the truth there, too. Dean may be blind but Sam is observant, ever vigilant, and Castiel has long suspected that Sam was aware of the thoughts Castiel harboured towards his brother.

“Cas, I—”

Castiel shakes his head, but it’s too late. Puriel has seen the look between them and she interprets it correctly. “It’s true, isn’t it?” she hisses. “You sodomised with them. Degraded yourself.”

“I haven’t,” he replies, and even though it’s the truth it comes out weak. His heart is wholly human, and wholly Dean’s, even through the years without reciprocation.

“Cas,” Sam whispers.

“Don’t!” Castiel turns his head. There’s grief in Sam’s voice and something worse, too. Pity.

“Well.” Puriel’s mouth is turned up in a sneer. “I think we’ve found a way to convince you to part with your precious spell. Isn’t that right, Castiel?”

Castiel is too tired for this. Too wrung out. His face is bruised and he wants it to _end._ “I don’t understand,” he pleads, but Puriel snaps her fingers and the chain linked to Sam’s collar isn’t buried in the wall anymore. It glows briefly and when Castiel looks up it’s buried in the concrete between Dean’s toes. Sam writhes forward, grabbing at Dean’s feet, his knees, his hips, making a noise like he’s starving. The chain is too short to go any higher so Sam wraps his arms around Dean’s thighs, trying to lift him. Trying to take the strain off his neck. It’s useless, anyway. Dean’s not breathing. His soul is held in place, but everything else is gone.

“Sam,” Castiel warns, but it’s too late. Puriel’s fingers are on Dean’s forehead and Dean rattles with life as his lungs expand. Cold blood dribbles from his mouth and the wet mess of his stomach folds back into itself. He jerks and screams as though he’s already being tortured, and Sam holds him up, oblivious to the nakedness of their proximity. Sam’s cheek is against Dean’s thigh and he’s wiggling closer, sitting on his heels, getting his legs beneath Dean’s feet to give him something to stand on. Dean leans a knee on Sam’s shoulder to steady himself and Castiel feels a sick, directionless dread. Puriel is smiling coldly from the other end of the room, watching him as he watches them. He doesn’t know what she is planning but he knows that it will be vast, and terrible. It might end them all.

Sam murmurs Dean’s name into the skin of his thigh, arms still wrapped around him, checking for wounds that disappeared moments before.

“Dean,” Sam whispers, “we’ll get out of this, we’ll get out of here, just hang on, okay, I’m here, just hang on.”

Castiel wants to tell them to be still. He wants to tell Sam to not make promises that neither of them can keep.

Puriel saunters forward and grips Sam’s hair again, jerking him back until he’s forced to relinquish his hold on Dean’s legs. Dean kicks out at her, but his foot passes through. Castiel shakes his head when Dean looks at him. There’s no use fighting. In Heaven, Puriel is on home ground. Her advantage is too great. If they had an angel blade or something made in Hell-fire they might stand a chance, but like this…

“Here’s how this is going to go,” she says, ignoring their silent communication. She strokes a finger down Sam’s cheek, almost lovingly. “You’re going to show your angel puppy just how pitiful you humans really are.” She taps his lips and he snaps at her. “You’re going to show him how weak the human body is. How easily it gives in. Do you understand?”

Sam tries to shake her off but her hand is steadfast in his hair, and Dean’s weight is still pressed down on his thighs. “There’s no spell,” he says between gritted teeth. “And even if there was we wouldn’t help you.” He’s emboldened by Dean’s life, by his unharmed body, and Castiel wants to warn him.

“Oh but you _are_ helping me.” Puriel’s thumb dips into his mouth, pulling his lower jaw down. Dean shouts something unintelligible and kicks out again. “I think Castiel is bottling up what he knows, and maybe he just needs both of you to hurt before he gives in.” She looks over and directs the next sentence to Castiel. “He can’t keep the Winchesters on a pedestal forever, after all.”

“Puriel, please,” he tries. “This is pointless. There is no spell.”

“We’ll see.” She digs her thumb further into Sam’s mouth and pulls on his hair, forcing his jaw open. He thrashes, and in a blink his arms are suddenly behind his back, held the same as Dean’s, forearm to forearm. She yanks his head backwards with his mouth still stretched wide, and spits on his face. Some of it must get into his mouth because he chokes and heaves, and Dean starts shouting fiercely. Puriel ignores them and holds Sam still. “You’re going to conduct fellatio on your brother,” she tells him dispassionately. There’s a beat of silence before they both start yelling. Dean kicks out frantically, trying to push away, and Sam’s shoulders heave as he struggles against the restraints on his arms and against her cold, implacable hands.

Only Castiel remains silent. He finds himself on his knees without knowing how he got there. There’s no point in fighting. Puriel has determined the best way to hurt them and their compliance is only a secondary concern. Heaven has always understood the importance of sex, as a means of procreation and pleasure, and they have always understood the importance of rape, as a means of dominance and control. “You can’t,” he wants to say, but he knows the rules of Heaven as well as she does. She can. She will.

With her thumb hooked behind Sam’s bottom teeth, Puriel draws him forward. Dean plants his feet on Sam’s chest, taking his weight into the collar, but Puriel is inexorable and soon Dean grows limp from oxygen deprivation. Puriel tugs Sam into position.

There is a spot in Castiel’s stomach where his grace used to reside. It usually takes care of his bodily functions, and without it he feels the overwhelming urge to cry. This should not be happening. This should not be how Sam remembers his brother. This should not be the way they are broken apart. But as Puriel holds the back of Sam’s head Castiel can _see_ him desperately refusing to bite down on the unfamiliar intrusion in his mouth, and it breaks something in Castiel’s chest.

“The seven suns spell,” he says urgently, on a whim. “You could replace the purity signs with something, Raphael’s name, maybe.” As he says it he knows it’s impossible, won’t work, and Puriel jams Sam’s head further forward. She knows it isn’t possible just as well as he does. “His vessel,” Castiel tries again. “Carvings on the ribs. A summoning.”

“Stop wasting my time,” she seethes. “Give me the real spell!” She shoves Sam as far as he can go, right against Dean’s crotch until he’s choking and gagging but still not biting down. Dean tries to arch away but there’s nowhere for him arch _to_. His chest is stuttering in a way that looks more like choking than breathing. “Your humans will stay where they are until you divulge what you know, or they manage orgasm. Would you really let brothers know each other carnally rather than relinquish the spell?” She strokes a hand through Sam’s hair then leans back. With a final cruel smile she whips out of the door, which disappears behind her. The thing in Dean’s mouth disappears, too.

“Sammy,” he rasps.

Sam pulls away immediately, and the moment his lips are clear Dean throws his head back and starts screaming. _Howling._ Body rigid and convulsing. With a cry, Sam leans forward again, wrapping his lips back where Puriel had placed him, and the screams end. Dean goes limp, breathing hard and shaking.

Tears blur Castiel’s vision, and the cell is so quiet that he can hear the sound he makes when his throat closes around each breath of air. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “There’s no spell. I wish there was. I would give it to her, I swear. If it existed, I would. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Dean’s eyes find his and they’re just as wide as Castiel expected. Just as horrified. “Cas, fuck,” he says, voice hoarse.

“It’s okay,” Castiel murmurs, even though it isn’t. “We’ll get out of this.” Sam makes a noise from between Dean’s legs and a tremble runs up Dean’s entire body.

“No, we won’t,” Dean whispers. “Sam, Sammy, you know what she wants you to do but you don’t… you don’t have to, okay? I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse.” There’s the ghost of a smile on his lips and Castiel can tell he’s trying to joke, trying to make this light, make the decision easier. But even Castiel knows that it was never really going to be a decision. There’s nothing the brothers wouldn’t do for each other and that familial necessity extends here, too. To the worst thing that could possibly happen to them. When Dean looks down he must see the same knowledge in Sam’s eyes because his face crumples up into something that could be pity if it was between anyone else, but between them, between Dean and Sam, it’s just understanding.

“Okay,” Dean breathes, and Castiel has to close his eyes because that kind of love isn’t something he should bear witness to, and there’s a deep-hidden shame in his gut as he thinks about what Sam’s seeing right now. What he’s tasting. How many times has he imagined that same thing? That same position?

“Dean,” he whimpers, breaking. “Sam.”

“That’s right.” When Castiel opens his eyes Dean’s staring straight at him. “Cas is going to help us, too, aren’t you, Cas?”

“Of course,” he breathes. “Anything.” Dean’s eyes crinkle in sad amusement and there’s an acknowledgement there, that this could have been something else if they were alone and relaxed. If it was just the two of them, just Cas and Dean.

But it’s not. It’s Sam. Forced to his knees. Forced into providing something he would never have provided otherwise. Incest is forbidden in Heaven but Puriel is playing with loopholes, imposing this act upon brothers and calling it something else. _Fellatio,_ she had said. Castiel could scream.

But instead he just licks his lips, and creeps forward so he’s in reaching distance. “How can I help?”

“You’re gonna distract Sammy,” Dean tells him.

“-am!” Sam mumbles, making Dean jerk, and the complaint is so familiar that Castiel almost smiles.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, Sam. You just have to listen to my voice. Close your eyes. It’s not so bad. Have you ever…” he swallows but forces himself to ask. “Have you ever done this before?” There’s a short pause before Sam shakes his head and Castiel doesn’t let his grief leak into his voice. Sam shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be forced into discovering if this is something he wants to do. Castiel coughs to clear the tightness in his throat. “Me neither,” he admits wetly. He feels Dean stir above him but doesn’t let himself look up. “But we’ll figure it out. Dean isn’t here. Dean’s somewhere else. It’s… Is there… anyone you _can_ imagine, here? Another… man?” Sam’s silence is an answer in itself and that breaks Castiel’s heart, too. “Okay,” he whispers. “Just someone else. A stranger.”

Dean breathes Sam’s name out and Cas glances up at him, begging him to be silent. Dean pinches his lips. They both know that Sam would never do this with a stranger but then again, he would never do this with Dean, either.

If Castiel sits side-on, he can just reach Sam’s back with one hand. Sam jumps when he first feels him but Castiel hushes him gently, knuckles along his spine. “It’s okay, we’re okay, everything’s fine.” He lets his fingertips brush the back of Sam’s shoulders. “We can do this.” He wills it to be true.

 

 

 


	3. Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst conceivable blowjob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But the best conceivable beta job   
> (Thanks Silver)

This can’t be happening. It really, really, definitely can’t. His heart is beating. It shouldn’t be. He should be dead. He _felt_ himself dying. His vision had gone dark. His lungs had stopped working. His fucking _heart._

But Sam is at his feet, lips stretched around just the head of Dean’s dick and of course he’s not dead, he’s not dying, he’s not even dreaming. He couldn’t come up with this. Not this. Not in the most fucked up nightmare he’s ever had, and he could write a book on fucked up nightmares. It’s just their hellhole of a life grinding them into the dirt.

He’d die again in a second, though. He really would. If it would stop this. He’d throw himself headfirst into Alastair’s arms if it would spare Sam. He’d take the whip and the cane and the fucking flogger one hundred times over. Would ask for more. He’d beg for it, if he thought it could help.

But death isn’t the way out of this one. He’s going to get a blowjob from his brother. He’s going to feel Sam’s mouth around him until he gets hard and comes. He flails, just once, can’t help it. Blanks out for a second. This can’t be happening.

“We’re going to start with just what you have in your mouth,” Cas murmurs, and when Dean looks down there he is, sitting awkwardly at the end of his own chain, facing to the side so he can reach Sam’s back. Sam’s half-kneeling, resting on his heels. Dean’s feet are pressed in between his calves and thighs and somehow that’s almost more fucked up than what’s happening between his legs. He’s _standing_ on Sam. Using him like some kind of fucking stepladder just to stop himself from choking. What kind of scum.

He wants to apologise. He wants to _scream._ But this isn’t about him. It’s about Sam. And he can’t make any noise at all. Has to make this as easy as possible. Let Sam believe it’s anyone other than him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and blocks out Cas’s voice telling Sam to suck. He can feel it happening but it’s happening to someone else. Someone else is getting their dick sucked by his brother. He breathes as shallowly as he can and quells the urge to retch. There’s nothing for him to throw up, anyway.

He thinks about Lisa. About her soft hands in the night. The press of her smile on the back of his shoulder. God, he had loved her so fucking much. But this isn’t that.

He thinks about Cassie. Has to struggle to remember. That was before Hell. He can’t recall her face. Just her lips. Her fingers. The bright sunshine sound of her laugh. But this isn’t that, either.

In truth there’s not a single goddamn person he can imagine right now. It’s his brother. It’s Sam’s mouth. Sam’s lips holding tight around the head of him. Teeth getting in the way. Sam’s tongue pressing, awkward and unsure, into the underside of his cock. Some feverish part of him thinks of Sam in a blanket. Small and vulnerable. Sam’s fist closing around his finger while their house burned in the night.

“Okay, just a bit more,” Cas whispers, and there’s wet heat down Dean’s cock as Sam draws him in. Dean’s never been further from aroused. He’s not gay, but he sure as shit isn’t straight, either. The feel of stubble on his thighs isn’t something new but he’s watched Sam shave for years now and it’s _Sam’s_ stubble. He squeezes his eyes shut and that’s worse. The tip of his cock is in Sam’s mouth.

He’s cut, and he knows Sam isn’t because hell, he’d changed Sam’s nappies for years. The not-quite-present part of his brain wonders if Sam knows what to do with him. It doesn’t seem like it. And, God, Cas doesn’t either. He’s the only one who might stand a chance at offering advice in this context and he’s swinging silently from the roof. This shouldn’t be happening

Except maybe they’ll figure it out because Sam licks at his slit and Dean feels a jolt of pleasure that is so out of sync with what’s happening that he opens his eyes on autopilot, can’t stop himself from looking down. And it’s Sam. Sam’s lips around his cock. His little brother. Dean spasms, retches, coughs up spit and bile and chokes himself on it, jerking.

 _“Sam,”_ he moans, dry heaving on air, kicking out.

He slips out of Sam’s mouth and it’s like an electric current shoots up his spine. He doesn’t hear himself screaming though he knows he is. Pain so fierce he’s sure he’s crackling with it. Obliterating. Fire beneath his skin and needles in his head and white-hot coals where his stomach should be. “Dean!” A wet-wrong sound as Sam’s chin bumps against his thighs, searching, open-mouthed, until he can take Dean back in. The pain leaves so fast it might have never been there but Dean’s shaking, shivering, and it’s not completely unlike the feeling of death. It’s not so different from the cold-running horror of his blood not quite making it to his head. His lips going numb.

Whatever chub Sam had managed to wring out of him is long gone, and Dean has never been softer in his life.

 _“Dean.”_ Cas is staring up at him, blue eyes wet and wild, and next to him is Sam, still kneeling at Dean’s feet and looking at him as well, though he quickly glances away, turning blankly towards Dean’s stomach, or some non-existent middle-distance. Taking himself away. “Look at me,” Cas orders, and Dean’s eyes leave Sam’s to obey.

“Cas,” he begs. Not sure what he’s begging for. Cas will know. Cas has to know. Has to pick them both up like he’s done so many times before. “Cas, _please_.” _Just get us through this._

“Shh,” Cas murmurs, “just listen.” He swipes his knuckles over Sam’s spine again, the only comfort he can offer in the circumstances. He doesn’t stop staring at Dean. “Sam,” he whispers, “suck, gently.” Sam does and Dean wants to kick out again but Cas is still staring him down. Or up. Whatever. “Again,” Cas whispers, and when Sam sucks again it’s almost as if it’s _Cas_ doing it for Dean. _To_ Dean. “Press up with your tongue,” Cas orders, and Dean can feel it. A soft-rough pressure on the underside of his head. Sam is following Cas’s orders. It’s not Sam. It’s Cas. Cas is doing this. Dean stares down at him. “Lick your tongue up,” Cas whispers, and Dean can feel him move up until his tongue is sliding against his slit again. He jerks, same as before. He’s sensitive there. “That’s good,” Cas tells them both. “Again.” The same movement. “Again.”

This time the pleasure doesn’t come as a surprise, but Dean still wants to cry. He’s getting hard in his brother’s mouth.

As soon as he thinks it he falls flaccid, and he hates himself even more. He’s only prolonging this for Sam. He’s making it worse. But Cas just continues, soft calm words, encouraging Dean, telling Sam what to do, monitoring Dean’s expressions and the hitching of his chest and communicating it to Sam so neither of them has to watch. Dean’s eyes are fixed on Cas’s and there’s something unspoken. That this could have been Cas. That it still could be, someday. For one insane moment Dean remembers the years when he had thought he was the only one, that Cas didn’t feel the same, but it’s now so obvious. Of course it was Cas. It’s always been Cas. From the moment he pulled Dean from Hell. From the moment Dean first touched the handprint on his shoulder. It’s always been Cas, even here, even now. Making it as easy as possible for Sam to blow Dean.

It’s so fucked up and Dean thinks it’s the best thing Cas has ever done for them. He dementedly promises himself that he’s going to buy Cas flowers as soon as they get home. He must be going crazy because he imagines getting the florist to write him a card. _Thanks for the pseudo blow-job._

Cas never falters. He’s slow and calm and steady, but it still takes too long. There’s an inordinate amount of time between start and finish, where Dean fights against the feeling of horror that’s eating him alive. Every time he thinks too closely about what’s happening between his legs he loses his erection but Cas works him through it, gentle and coaxing, until he’s fully hard, properly hard. It takes hours. None of them needs to eat, or sleep. They’re in Heaven. There’s nothing to distract from the soft-wet pressure and Cas’s voice talking them through it.

When he finally comes it’s barely even pleasurable. So miserable that it’s hardly an orgasm, but it is, it is. He can’t stop himself from looking at his brother’s face and Sam is making an expression of disgust, even as he stays where he is, letting the blurts of Dean’s come spill out from between his lips and down his chin.

Something shuts off and Dean will never forget that image, not for the rest of his life. It’s going to be etched into the backs of his eyelids, along with Sam’s soft-baby eyes dancing red in the reflected light of the fire, and the shape his mouth had made when Dean had dragged him from the bed beneath where Jess was bleeding.

There’s a long, miserable pause where no one moves, and then, tentatively, Sam leans back, and Dean’s cock falls from his lips, still not all the way soft.

There’s no thunderbolt of pain and he’s so fucking grateful that for a moment he forgets where he actually is. His brain’s going soft, hazy, but he’s still lucid enough to say his brother’s name—and maybe the start of an apology—before Sam throws up.

Which is, of course, the exact moment that Puriel returns, lips downturned in distaste as Sam coughs into his own lap.

“Puriel,” Cas pleads. “This is pointless.”

“You’re more stubborn than I thought.” She snaps her fingers and Cas and Sam are back in their previous positions, chained to the far wall. Sam scrubs at his face with his freed hands, trying to remove the evidence of… of what Dean had done. Dean takes a second to rebalance himself on his toes. “I would love to continue this experiment,” she continues, “but unfortunately I can’t allow anal penetration between siblings. Not while we remain under Heaven’s influence.”

Dean freezes and feels relief from a worry he hadn’t even realised he’d been harbouring. “Well thank fucking Christ for that,” he mutters, but then his eyes stray to Cas and he’s reminded that there’s still someone else in the room who she could force to fuck him.

She sees where he’s looking and sneers. “As much as I know how you would enjoy that, I have something else that should keep your angel pet interested.” She scratches fingers against his scalp and Dean bares his teeth at her. “I trust an abdominal puncture will keep you all busy while I organise my… friend?”

“Huh?” Dean grunts, but there’s no need to beg the question because her hand glows briefly and there doesn’t seem to be any time at all between the moment her arm starts to swing towards him and the soft, wet _shnick_ as she buries something in the fleshy spot beneath his ribs.

The cry of “Dean!” is so loud that he’s not entirely sure who shouted it.

With a snap of her fingers Dean’s chains disappear, and Puriel along with them. She whisks out of the door before Dean can grab for her.

There is, quite frankly, a _blinding_ level of pain as he collapses backwards. He knows immediately that she’s punctured something important, which seems rather unlike her usual MO of making him scream until he dies of shock. There’s a rank smell in the air and he gapes down at the place where his stomach used to be.

“Oh fuck,” he wheezes into the concrete floor. “I think I pissed myself.”

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Sam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, I have to go and do boring adult things for a while, so I won't be updating until early August/maybe late July. I KNOW IT'S SO LONG I'M SO SORRY! Try not to miss me too much! I'll still be on [tumblr](omgbubblesomg.tumblr.com) if you want to chat before then ;)
> 
> As always thanks to [Silver](www.silver9mm.tumblr.com) for betaing <3  
> And thanks to [Rachel](www.rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com) for the drool-inducing porn ideas <3

It’s a testament to Dean’s stubbornness that he flat out refuses to make his way over to them for a solid five minutes. He’s on the far side of the cell and neither Sam nor Cas can reach him, even at the full extent of the chains.

“Come on,” Sam wheedles. “It’s not far.”

“’M not fucking _crawling_ _,”_ Dean hisses for the tenth time. He’s bent over on his side, legs towards them so Sam can only see his face if he leans at an angle. “You don’t want me over there anyway. Fucking _stinks_ _.”_

Cas had already tried for the “It’s not urine, it’s organ excrement,” but that had only made Dean curl up tighter, groaning and cursing.

From what Sam can see the wound isn’t bleeding _too_ heavily, and the knife is still inside it. Dean’s got one hand clamped over it, which must be doing _something_ at least. But Sam doesn’t want to run the risk of Dean accidentally bleeding out in Puriel’s absence in case she isn’t able to bring him back.

“Dean!” Sam snaps, sick of trying to be patient. “Quit your goddamn moaning and get your ass over here.” He puts on his best _I am not kidding around right now_ face so when Dean blearily looks over he can glare with the appropriate level of threat.

Dean swallows. “It might take a while,” he croaks.

Sam and Cas are already at the limit of their chains, but they both stretch their arms out so Dean can see he only has a few feet to close. Dean tentatively stretches his own arm out and uses the flat of his palm to drag himself in a circle until he’s facing them before he starts moving painstakingly forward. From the way he keeps his other hand clenched over his stomach and doesn’t even use his legs Sam can tell the pain is a lot more than he’s letting on.

Eventually he’s close enough for Cas to grab his shoulder, and they drag a semi-lucid Dean back to the other side of the cell. Sam snags the blood-stained over-shirt from the floor as they go. He plans to make a bandage out of it but there’s something tacky and white on one sleeve and the air leaves the room as he stares at it. He’s suddenly on his knees. His jaw is aching. Cas is talking in his ear but there’s not much that he could possible say to alleviate the reality of Dean getting hard in his mouth. He’s aware of things he never thought he’d have to be aware of. He’s aware of the vein along the underside of Dean’s cock. The throb of it on his tongue. He’s aware of the terrible salty blurts of something thick and sticky whenever he licks. He’s uncomfortably familiar with just how much he can take in his mouth before it’s too much. He’s trying to blank out but Dean’s right there, he’s right there. The smell of him. Hair in Sam’s nose. His feet twitching against Sam’s legs.

“Sam?” Cas glances over at him and Sam has to dig his fingernails into his palm.

“M’fine.” He scrubs at the white stain surreptitiously until there’s no trace of it left. Better just to pretend it was never there. Just… just until they get out of here. He twists the shirt into the tightest strap he can manage and takes it to where Cas is trying to clean the blood off Dean’s stomach. “Hold his hands,” he says, and Dean lets out a heartfelt whimper as Cas pulls at his wrists until he exposes the wound underneath. The knife turns out to not be a knife at all. It looks like a thin wooden stake. But it’s embedded deep enough that Sam doesn’t try to remove it. Blood is oozing out from around it and Sam spins the shirt-strap into a circle, which he loops over the stake to press into the sides. It’s unsanitary and it’s possibly the shittiest triage he’s ever performed but it’ll slow the flow of blood and that’s the whole point, anyway. Dean twists pathetically beneath his hands as Sam presses down.

“Cas, your tie,” Sam orders, and when Cas slips out of it he uses it to bind the shitty first-aid down. He presses his fingers into it, too, and one of Cas’s hands joins his. When they’re done, Dean licks his lips and blinks up at him, eyes crossing.

“You’re an ugly nurse,” he deadpans.

“Dude, if you die and that’s the last thing you ever say to me I’m gonna be so pissed.”

It’s hardly the time to be cracking jokes, but Dean smiles wetly and awkwardly pats Sam’s thigh. “You’re right. If I die I want the last thing I say to be yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker.”

“You’re not going to die,” Cas gravels, and Dean’s hand blindly reaches out until Cas grabs it, squeezing. Sam rearranges them carefully until Dean’s head is pillowed against his thigh.

“Actually,” says Dean, “we should talk about that.”

“Nothing to discuss,” Sam tells him. “You’re not dying.”

“Hear me out.” Dean’s too weak to twist his neck around and look up at Sam, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. Sam saves him the effort and leans forward so Dean can see his face. “If she’s not paying attention maybe she won’t bring me back.”

“That’s hardly a valid argument _for_ your death,” Cas sighs, and Sam silently agrees, though he worries about how Dean’s handling things if he’s already contemplating killing himself.

“But I know how to escape Heaven,” he points out. “And Hell. _And_ Purgatory. Me dying might be our only way outta this shithole.”

Sam’s mouth twists as he listens to Dean confessing that he’s not sure where he’s going to end up after death. But he’s not even sure which place would be worse. They’re already _in_ Heaven, after all. “She’s just gonna bring you back,” he says.

“Might as well try. Not much to lose, right?”

“Not much to—Dean, you could die for _real._ ”

“Never know if we don’t try.”

“I’d rather not know.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Their lives are so messed up. They’re sitting around Dean’s impaled body discussing the merits of his death. “We are not talking about this,” Sam mutters.

“We kinda have to. This could be our only chance.”

“I agree with Dean,” Cas sighs and Sam tries to glare him down. Cas shrugs. “Puriel is not about to give up, and if nothing else, death might be the only way for Dean to escape an eternity of torture.”

Sam shrivels at the reminder of what’s waiting for them. Dean blinks sadly up at him. “Death hasn’t learned to keep me yet,” he slurs. Cas lifts his hand away from Sam’s makeshift bandage. Sam takes a second to do the same.

“If you die for real I’m going to kick your ass,” he says, and undoes the tie. He lifts the soggy shirt off, too.

“Won’t take long,” Dean mumbles, closing his eyes. Sam scrubs his knuckles across his face. He should be used to watching his brother die, but how could he be? How could he ever…

“Does it hurt?” he whispers.

“S’not so bad.”

_Liar._

“I could remove the stake,” Cas offers, “to expedite the process.”

Dean grimaces in a way that is probably meant to be a smile. “I’d rather not die in _agony_.”

“I understand.” Cas’s hand finds Sam’s shoulder as they lean over Dean’s body. The colour has drained from his face and he’s clammy to the touch. Cas brings Dean’s fingers to his lips. “Good luck,” he whispers, maybe too quiet for Dean to even hear.

“Hey, Samm—?”

“I’m here,” Sam says thickly, gripping Dean’s other hand.

“S’rry ’bout the—” The thing Dean’s sorry about gets lost in a death-rattle cough. But Sam knows exactly what he’s referring to.

“Don’t apologise, jerk.”

A smile flutters at the corner of Dean’s mouth. “’f I come back w’re n’ver talk’n ’bout it.”

“You know that’s not healthy.” Sam presses a trembling hand to Dean’s temple. It’s cold and grey, and there’s a thin film of sweat that Sam wipes away.

“Guess not.” Dean breathes out, slowly, then breathes in, even slower. “Yippee-ki-yay,” he mouths, breathing out. Sam matches him breath for breath until the next breath doesn’t come at all. He holds until he’s forced to gasp. When he says Dean’s name there’s no response.

Sam’s sob breaks in the sudden quiet, and Cas draws him in. Dean’s body rests between them. Lifeless. Sam can feel Cas moving one-armed, shrugging out of the trench coat to cover… the body. “Oh God,” he whispers into Cas’s shoulder. “What if he’s actually—” he doesn’t let himself finish, but Cas holds him tighter.

“His soul hasn’t left.”

“He… _what_?”

“It appears that Puriel’s hold extends even when she isn’t present.”

Sam wants to hit something. His fingers clench around Dean’s. “Then what was the _point_?”

Cas wriggles his hand in between them, so Sam can feel the hard tip of the wooden stake that Cas has clutched in his fist. “It wasn’t pointless,” Cas whispers. “Now we know that she’s not always watching.”

They have a weapon.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you in a few months!


	5. Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Puriel brings a friend to help extricate the spell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I wouldn't be adding a chapter until August but at least my updates are inconsistent in both directions
> 
> All the warnings are applicable in this chapter so don't read if that's not your jam.  
> If it _is_ your jam then oooh boy you're about to get the best update _ever_.
> 
> We wouldn't be here today without [Silver9mm](www.silver9mm.tumblr.com) squashing plot bugs and errant commas like the weapon that she is, so as usual all my gratitude for being a world class beta.

 

Waking up is a shock, to say the least. He can’t quite remember what he’s waking up _from_ but it’s certainly uncomfortable to be suddenly lying face down on cold concrete. As he wriggles he finds that his wrists are attached to the floor beneath him with a foot of chain, which becomes even less ideal when he remembers where he is. So much for dying to escape.

“Do I at least get a coffee before we start again?” he snarks into the concrete.

A foot lands in his side. “Do you have any idea how much I despise restarting your heart?”

Dean rolls his shoulders and winces. “You and me both, sweetheart.”

“Then it’s fortunate for us both that I believe your angel will be unable to withstand this additional enticement.”

“Wouldn’t count on it,” Dean tells the floor. But then he hears it. The soft familiar _whumph_ of something large and alive. He freezes for a split second before muscle memory kicks in and he throws himself away. Something wrenches in his shoulder and he lands on his side, arms still stretched out as though they’re pointing to the place where Puriel has a gloved hand clenched over thin air.

“Wait,” Dean stutters. “Wait, wait, I—”

“Dean,” Sam whispers from behind him, but Dean can’t turn to look. His eyes are wide on the place where Puriel’s holding something back.

“You c-can’t,” he chokes, “I’m not damned.”

“It’s not your soul that it wants.” She sounds smug. She _looks_ smug. Dean can’t _breathe._ Her hand unclenches and Dean screams, even before he feels it. These are the memories that he has long since buried. Teeth and claws and his own belly ripping open as something shredded into him. Every nightmare he’s had since Hell resurfaces as the thing—the _hellhound_ —lands on top of him. He can’t see it but, god, he can feel it. Giant paws shove against his shoulders and there’s definitely something torn, or broken, though he can barely feel it over the sudden terror when hot breath washes over him and it’s sulphur, it’s sulphur, he’s in Hell, he’s breathing it in, he’s dead, he’s dead. Alastair’s laughing at him as he screams and Sammy is so far away and Cas exists only in his imagination.

Something wet splashes across his face as the hellhound drools and Dean arches when it burns his skin like acid. His whole body fights to flee. There’s nowhere to run to. He’s stretched as far as he can go. There are voices behind him and he can barely recognise them. His brother and his angel. Shouting for him. He knows that there’s safety there, if only he could reach them. But the hound is massive, and it’s got him. He’s in Hell. He’s not going anywhere.

“Would you like to see it?” says a voice from nearby, so sweet, and no, of course not, of course he doesn’t, not again. He sees them every time he shuts his eyes, but Puriel snaps her fingers and suddenly the paws on his shoulders are attached to something made of shadow and bone and rotting flesh. The thing’s head is only inches from his own, baring teeth as long as his fingers, and Dean screams, more terrified than he’s ever been. It’s a hound only in name. Its face is just a leering skull with embers where the eyes are supposed to go and a jaw that almost detaches itself as it opens wide. It could fit his whole head in there and still have room. Great horns burst from the top of its skull, arcing forward, away from the curve of its colossal neck. The skeletal bulk of its body looms above him, almost as long as he is tall, and twice as heavy. A thin whip-like tail lashes above them and its shoulders heave as it pants, blood-red tongue lolling out. Rotting skin only covers part of it, falling off its bones in wet flaps to reveal the writhing mess of oily darkness inside.

“Stop!” someone shouts. Not Dean. Dean is so beyond shouting he can barely even remember his own name. The hound lowers its upturned snout to snort a line of smoke across his face, making him cough, gag. It clings like it’s alive and he's going to drown in the sulphur stink of it.

The claws on his shoulders lengthen, digging in, dragging him back to the centre of the room. He kicks out, scrambling to find some purchase on the concrete but the thing rumbles and the coiling mass inside it actually _vibrates_ as it growls. It’s got claws in his skin as it slides him in between its legs. His arms are above him, and he remembers how to scream just in time as something touches the inside of his thigh. When he looks down between their bodies he convulses in terror and the hound growls again. Its legs are made of muscle and darkness and the thing protruding from in between them has Dean retching and fighting against the claws, impaling himself even further as he struggles to get away, get away, _get away._

“Impressive, isn’t he?” someone croons, and Dean’s insides feel like they might not be inside him anymore. His lungs are up at the base of his throat, strangling him. The hellhound’s cock nudges his thigh again and it’s the size of a fucking arm. Bulbous at the tip and glowing as though it’s lit from within. The rest of the hound could be made of shadow but when it nudges at him again its cock feels solid as fuck and Dean knows what’s coming, what she’s planned. He screams again until the thing follows the source of the noise, huffing sulphur-smoke straight into his open mouth. When Dean chokes its teeth find his throat, coming to rest on the pulse-point there. It’s a threat that Dean can’t hope to obey, even if he wanted to. His body doesn’t belong to him anymore. He’s spasming uncontrollably, flailing wildly even though he _knows_ it’s not helping.

The claws in his shoulders wrench him over and his chin hits the concrete. It gouges long marks into the ground before it finds a new hold in his sides. When he looks up Sam’s face is only a few feet from his own. His eyes are as wide as his mouth. He’s shouting something that Dean can’t possibly make sense of.

“Don’t look,” he moans. “Sammy, don’t look!”

Cas is there, too, yanking at Sam’s shoulder, making him turn around, but Puriel snaps her fingers and both Sam and Cas are wrenched forward. The muscle in Sam’s neck jumps as he tries to fight whatever’s holding his head, and Dean wants to tell him to close his eyes but the hound throws itself down against his back and he loses whatever air he still had left in his lungs.

The teeth return, at the back of his neck this time, barely pricking hard enough to draw blood, so delicately at odds with the claws that are holding his ribs _through_ the skin.

“Stop,” he hears himself begging. “Stop it, stop, stop.”

It doesn’t stop.

The thing hunkers down and licks a wet stripe up his spine. He screams again and jerks instinctively but there’s nowhere for his body to jerk _to_. Alastair’s cackling somewhere above him. The tongue comes to rest behind one of Dean’s ears and it snuffles at him as the thing between its legs prods, prehensile and malevolent. Dean squeezes his thighs together and drums his feet on the ground. His wrists are stretched out in front of him and he hauls on the chains until he slides a few inches forward. The hound just digs in harder and hauls him back, pulling them flush again. It places one massive paw between his shoulder blades and presses down. This time its cock jams in between his thighs and it whines, thrusting into the tight space. Dean shrieks and automatically spreads his legs, trying to stop it touching him, but all that achieves is a thick hindpaw coming to rest between his knees. It thrusts again and he chokes on a scream, hauling on the chains. Something in his wrist pops but he doesn’t move an inch with the paw on his back. The hound pants right into his ear and thrusts again and he thinks he’ll never stop screaming.

He buries his face in the crook of his shoulder just as the hound figures itself out. The next thrust forward shoves the massive head of its cock against his hole and he finds his teeth in the meat of his arm almost without knowing how they got there. Oh God, no, please. Something slimy-hot dribbles down his ass, burning and itching as it goes. All his muscles lock as the hound gets its other hindpaw between his knees, knocking his legs out wide as it crouches down to thrust again, shoving and _shoving._

Puriel _tsks_ from somewhere behind him. “Now, now, there’s no need to be like that. If you don’t let him in he might get _impatient.”_ Her shoes click-click closer until she can get a hand into the short strands of his hair. He doesn’t relax his jaw fast enough and when she yanks him up he almost pulls a chunk of his arm clean off.

Cas and Sam are staring at him in open-mouthed horror and he spits out his mouthful of blood to tell them something—look away, look away—but the hellhound stabs forward again and the burning slime eases the friction just enough for it to push, and _push_ , until the futile resistance of his body finally gives way and it shoves itself inside. Cas’s eyes lock with his at the exact moment it happens and Dean doesn’t know what’s on his face but the sound he’s making isn’t human. It _hurts_. Hurts in a way that’s so intimate he thinks for a burning second that it might kill him. It’s enormous where it’s jammed inside him and it’s only just the tip of it. “Mother _fucker!”_ he shrieks. He’s being _stretched_ around it and every movement is the most private kind of agony. Even the involuntary tensing of his muscles feels like a knife to the gut when it does absolutely nothing to dispel the massive thing inside him.

The hellhound crouches down over his shoulders, slobbering over the back of his neck and into his hair and panting in little sharp sulphurous breaths as it starts to twitch back and forth inside him, trying to wedge itself deeper. His spine arches away from it automatically, even though the movement creates all new kinds of pain. It feels like it’s trying to carve more room straight into his bowels. He tries to get his feet against its legs or pelvis, but even the flexing of his thigh muscles is torture, like everything’s connected to the epicentre where its cock is spearing him open. Something cold and wet wraps around his ankle and he screams again when he realises it’s the thing’s _tail,_ pulling tight to hoist his leg backwards around its thigh.

“Good boy,” Puriel croons, and Dean whimpers when the thing whines happily and knifes deeper. He can feel it moving inside him. The head twitching around like it’s separate from the rest of the hound, pressing up against whatever it can find and leaving fire behind.

“Cas!” he sobs, without really meaning to. Cas can’t do shit for him right now but god, it hurts. Someone’s put hot coals in his intestines. Alastair wants him to pick up the knife. There’s something burning and slimy in his ass and he doesn’t want to think about how it’s the only thing easing the way for the monstrosity that’s being shoved in after it. When the hound pulls back slightly some of it drips out to scorch down his balls and he grits his teeth against the scream that wells up at the base of his throat. Sam retches without moving his head, and Dean shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see what he’s doing to them.

The hellhound bumps up against something that feels like it could very possibly be the bottom of his stomach. He knows just enough about anatomy to know that’s not possible, not even remotely, but it’s hard not to believe it when the hound growls and snorts smoke over the back of his head and jerks up against him again. He hopes to hell that that’s it. That that’s as far as it can go. There’s no room left inside him for anything more.

When it pulls out just a fraction it feels like it’s taking his insides with it.

“Stop,” Dean whispers. “You can’t—”

Puriel hisses suddenly and the hand in his hair tightens. Dean blinks up in time to see Cas with his hands in front of his eyes. “Don’t try and avoid this,” she snarls at him. “You can stop this any time you want!” She snaps something unintelligible and the hellhound growls. She snaps again and it pulls itself out of Dean almost entirely, the bulbous head of it the only part still lodged inside. “See what your stubbornness has already done to your human?” Puriel hisses, and Dean fervently hopes that they can’t. He jerks against her hold but stills immediately, held in place by the agony between his legs. “Not even fully inside and the mutt is drooling for it. He knows human scum when he smells it.” Puriel rattles Dean’s head and the hellhound growls again as its hold on Dean gets loosened. It clamps its claws down harder and Dean is weirdly grateful for a pain that’s coming from somewhere other than his ass.

“Don’t pretend you’re doing this for anything but your own amusement,” Sam says hoarsely. “We told you, there isn’t any spell.”

Blood drips down Dean’s sides and into his armpits as the hound trembles above him, snorting in impatience.

“Very well,” Puriel says coldly. She releases her hold and Dean’s head drops back onto his arms, smearing into the blood there. He doesn’t have the strength to lift it again as she snaps something else in that unintelligible language before vanishing through the door with a cold laugh.

The hellhound makes an unholy screeching bark that sends all the hairs on Dean’s body on end. Then it hunkers down over him, tightens its hold on his sides, and rams all the way in.

Something _cracks_ and he is only very distantly aware that it’s in his head, not his spine. He feels his body collapse from across an ocean and as the hound drags him down against its pelvis he prays that the darkness at the edge of his vision is bringing unconsciousness with it.

 

 

 


	6. Cas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, the fact that Dean isn’t screaming is almost the worst part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing, I promise I'm writing. Sorry this chapter is short! What I lack in word count I make up for in extreme, terrifying whump.
> 
> All the usual warnings friends. Read at your own discretion.
> 
> Thanks to Silver9mm for betaing <3

Somehow, the fact that Dean isn’t screaming is almost the worst part. Castiel thinks that maybe he’s passed out, prays to a God that isn’t listening that he’s right. But then the abomination snuffles into the back of Dean’s neck and Dean squeezes his eyes shut, very much awake, and Castiel trembles.

This isn’t like the whips, or the electrocution. This isn’t even like Sam on his knees. Castiel can’t do anything to alleviate this pain. Which doesn’t stop him trying, though. He’s murmuring nonsense platitudes in the hope that Dean can hear him, though he’s given no indication thus far that he can. Sam has long since given up and his eyes, though forced in Dean’s general direction, are glazed into the middle distance. There are tracks of water down his cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Castiel hears himself lie. “It’s okay, we’re here, you’re okay.” If Dean remembers this moment then maybe he’ll remember these words, too.

The hound snorts a pool of smoke over Dean’s head and down his back. It writhes like normal smoke never would and clings to the blood dripping down Dean’s sides. The hound takes its paw off Dean’s back, readjusting its hold to bring Dean more firmly against it. It’s thrusting only barely, hardly drawing its huge length out at all, preferring to hump against Dean’s unresponsive body. Every jolt of its pelvis forces a huff of air out of Dean’s slack mouth.

Castiel keeps babbling. “It’s okay, you’re okay, you’ll make it.”

“I won’t do it,” Dean breathes.

“Yes you will, you’ll make it,” Castiel tells him, but Dean’s not even listening.

“I won’t do it, I won’t. You can’t make me.” He twitches, and his wrists flex against the taut chains. “I won’t,” he tells someone who isn’t really there. “I won’t hurt anyone.”

Sam chokes next to him, but neither of them correct Dean. If he thinks he’s in Hell then what could they possibly say to dissuade him? And what would be the point?

Castiel grips the sweat-slick length of the stake in his sleeve. He doesn’t know what good it’ll do, but it’s something, it’s something. “You’re okay,” he whispers, a lie so heavy it barely makes it past his lips.

The hound whines far back in its terrible throat, and the roiling mess inside it starts to pulse and slap against the inside of its ribs. Castiel doesn’t want to watch but his eyes swing down to the place where Dean’s spread open around its cock. Limbs and smoke obstruct the view but Castiel can see that there’s blood streaking Dean’s thighs, and something shiny and viscous. When the hound thrusts sharply he gets a glimpse of where Dean is stretched so impossibly wide. The hound’s cock is easily thicker than his wrist and it’s lit from within like there’s a fire beneath its skin. Sam retches again and Castiel knows he’s seeing the same thing.

The hound’s black smoky innards stretch and convulse, and tendrils seep through its ribs to lick at Dean’s back before trickling away. The hound is growling and barking and its teeth snap perilously close to the vulnerable skin at the back of Dean’s neck.

Sam gags and lurches, trying to turn away. “Cas,” he heaves, “Cas it’s, it’s got, it’s—” he coughs and chokes but Castiel doesn’t need him to point. There’s something growing at the base of the hellhound’s cock, a thick wedge of skin swelling up to poke at Dean’s ass with every thrust.

Dean blinks like he’s waking up and Castiel wants to tell him to go away again, don’t come back for this please God go back to where you were. Their eyes lock and Dean moans, instinctive and helpless. “Cas,” he begs, “Cas, don’t, don’t let it.”

Castiel can only shake his head, horrified, as the hound’s smoky innards leech out to grab and caress. They wrap themselves around Dean’s torso, hauling him up to hold him flush against the hellhound as it screeches another awful bark and leans forward to bury the wicked needlepoint tips of its teeth in his neck. Dean’s eyes fly open and he _screams_ and every part of the hound draws him in. Its tail, its claws, the smoke wriggling and crawling down his sides like beetles in the night. Some of the smoky tendrils find his mouth and worm their way in, holding his teeth apart even as he screams around them.

He goes back to fighting; wrenching hard against the hellhound’s hold and against where his wrist is swollen around the chains. He looks like he’s being electrocuted again, like his body’s moving without his control. When he screams there are no discernible words but it’s shrill and hysterical and it doesn’t stop even as the hound screams over the top of him, straight into his neck, loud like a thousand damned souls are screaming with it. It gives one last vicious thrust and the bulge at the base of its cock squeezes past where Dean’s already stretched too far and then it’s in, it’s in.

The hound’s scream turns into a whine and only then does Castiel realise that Dean’s gone quiet, too. He’s limp and trembling, pressed up against the rotting body above him and held in place as the hound extracts its teeth to lick almost tenderly at the pinpoints of blood on his neck. Its tail releases its grip on Dean’s ankle, unwinding slowly until his foot falls to the ground with a thump. The claws in Dean’s sides retract and the hound licks those wounds, too, working around the inky tendrils that dip into the wounds like hungry leeches. It lowers itself to the floor.

“Dean,” Sam breathes, and Dean’s eyes track slowly over to him, then keep going, rolling round into the side of his head to leave only the bloodshot whites of his eyes. His whole body jerks once, twice, and then he starts convulsing, drool and bloodied froth spilling out of his mouth and onto the concrete beneath him. His chin smacks against the puddle hard enough that Castiel can hear the sound of his teeth clacking.

“Dean!” he shouts, reaching out futilely.

The hound barely pays Dean’s juddering any attention. It gives an experimental tug of its hips before it folds its enormous limbs beneath itself and lays down, crushing Dean beneath it. Castiel loses all sight of him except for his hands stretched out in front and his feet splayed out behind, drumming spasmodically against the concrete.

The hound, with an enormous sigh and a puff of smoke, settles down. It shuts its eyes as though it intends to sleep, vibrating with a growl that’s almost a purr. Its tail swings delicately between Dean’s legs, the pointed tip of it caressing Dean’s thrashing calves.

Eventually Dean’s legs stop moving and the only reason Castiel knows he’s still alive is because the hound’s head lifts almost imperceptibly with Dean’s breaths. He slowly becomes aware of a pain in his hand, and when he looks down through his peripheries he finds that Sam’s fingers are gripped tight around his own.

He squeezes back and doesn’t let go. There’s nothing but the hot-sticky sound of the hound’s decaying lungs as it snorts sleepily. Its smoky innards caress whatever parts of Dean they can still reach.

“How long…”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

They sit in vigil side by side, hand in hand, barely breathing as they wait for whatever horror waits for them next. Castiel turns his hand outward as best as he can, so Sam can feel the outline of the stake against his own arm. He wants to convey some kind of comfort, though there’s not much to give. A wooden stake against an angel and a hound of hell is hardly a fair fight.

Hours or days later the hound snuffles in its sleep, a thick roll of smoke puffing out of its nose to slither across the floor.

“Dean?” Sam asks, almost hopefully. There’s a muffled reply from somewhere beneath the hound’s chest and almost as though it was waiting for the signal the hound hauls itself up onto its front paws, the last of its insides slithering back between its ribs. Dean’s face is blood-splattered and pale beneath its chest but his pupils are where they’re supposed to be and he groans when the hound shifts above him.

Castiel releases a shaky breath of air he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Dean’s eyes almost find his, but he looks away at the last moment. He doesn’t say anything, even when Sam breathes his name like a question.

The hound laboriously gets its feet beneath itself, and then levers itself up, pulling Dean’s hips up with it. Dean groans and fumbles his knees onto the concrete, trying to take the weight off where Castiel can see they’re still tied. A second later his knees lift off the ground too, and he scrabbles to get his feet beneath him instead, hampered by the thick hindlegs between his own. He has to keep his knees partially bent with his weight going into his toes at an awkward angle. His arms are stretched out in front of him, not even touching the ground, and his face contorts in pain as he’s forced to rely on the hound’s cock to hold him balanced.  The hound tugs thoughtfully on Dean’s hips, making him groan again. His thighs are already trembling with exertion.

“It’s almost over,” Sam promises weakly, and Castiel wonders how he can possibly know that. The hound rolls its shoulders like it’s yawning and nuzzles against the back of Dean’s shoulders. Its tongue lolls out and it’s easily a half foot long, blood-red and wet as it tastes the skin behind Dean’s ears.

Dean’s legs tremble and his head hangs low. Castiel can just barely hear him as he begs for it to stop, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper. Almost on cue the hound tugs again and Dean falls to his knees with a broken shout as its cock slips free in a rush of smoking liquid. For the first time since its arrival Castiel gets a proper look at the appendage between the hound’s legs, and he wishes fervently that he hadn’t. He’d known it had been large but he hadn’t realised the extent. It drips a red-tinged ooze that sizzles when it hits the floor.

Sam’s hand feels like a vice around his own and he grips back just as hard as Dean collapses onto the concrete.

 

 

 

 


	7. Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hound cleans its new mate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Rachel!! Here's a short little chapter to celebrate another year of smut and angst <3
> 
> To everyone else: all the warnings still apply! Read at your own discretion :)
> 
> Thanks to [Silver](www.silver9mm.tumblr.com) for betaing!

He wants to pass out forever. He wants a bottle of jack. Most of all he wants to be somewhere, anywhere, that isn’t here.

His stomach cramps and he clenches helplessly, a wave of blood and slime and whatever-the-fuck-else spilling out of his ass and between his thighs. The cramp twists evilly in his stomach, wringing him out well past the point of pain.

He can hear Sam and Cas calling to him gently, and then with more urgency, but there’s literally not a single ounce of energy left in him to answer. He’s so completely exhausted that for a moment he almost wants to die just so Puriel can bring him back to full health. Everything below his sternum feels like pulverised jelly, and the rest of him isn’t faring much better. His left wrist is hot and it’s swollen up around the chain. His chin and stomach are scraped raw and he’s fairly certain some of his teeth are cracked. His sides and shoulders are a bloody ruin and the bites on his neck ache in a weird, wriggly kind of way that makes him skitter nervously away from the thought of _venom._

He cramps again and his thighs twitch violently as they try to jerk up to his gut. He has to wait for the cramp to pass before he can breathe again, but even then the air feels like it’s too thick to possibly make it into his lungs. Everything smells like sulphur.

The hound snuffles behind him and if there were any muscles still online they might be trying to get away, but all he manages is a weak shiver. He feels something wet between his thighs and for a blinding moment he thinks that its come back for round two but he can’t do anything about it when another cramp twists cruelly in his stomach. He almost blacks out for a few seconds, and when it passes he finds a gigantic paw pinning the small of his back.

The wet thing returns and with dawning horror Dean realises it’s a _tongue._ Warm and soft as it delves between his thighs. It’s _licking_ him. Licking at the blood and the wet mess that’s still dripping out of him. For one godawful moment it’s the most horrific thing in the world, but his limbs flop uselessly and utterly fail to do anything about it and it doesn’t matter that he wants out because he’s _stuck._ He sobs weakly into the concrete. He doesn’t put up any resistance at all when it shunts one of his legs to the side to get at the mess that’s dripped onto his balls and the underside of his dick. Another cramp wrings him out and the hound huffs back up to his hole, licking at everything leaking out of him as his stomach clenches.

“Stop,” he begs in a voice so thin it’s barely there at all. “Stop, stop.”

The hound’s tongue is long and slender and Dean distinctly remembers its saliva burning before, though now it feels no worse than a tingle. He squeezes his eyes shut and begs for it to end, groaning quietly when a twist in his gut squeezes another trickle of fluid into the hound’s panting mouth.

In between cramps the hound moves to the rest of his body. It licks at his thighs, his calves. It wraps its tongue around his ankle. He barely even twitches when it huffs roughly at the sensitive skin behind his knee. He’s done. He’s so done. He wants this to be over and he wants _out._ There’s no part of him that doesn’t hurt, and every sliver of sulphurous air feels like it’s too much effort to bother breathing in. The hound pads up him, so huge it’s got two paws on either side of his body. It fastidiously licks every inch of his back, his shoulders, the claw marks in his sides. It makes a low growl when it reaches his neck, snuffling curiously at the bite marks there. He rests his forehead on the concrete and tries not to feel how his neck aches like it’s waiting for the teeth to come back.

The hound moves away and he gets a half second of relief before it rolls him over.

“Don’t” he whispers, not knowing what it’s going to do next but begging anyway. “Just stop, please, God, Cas, make it stop.”

Someone says something behind him but he barely hears them. The hound is snuffling lazily up his side and along his chest. He’s red and raw from the concrete and the hound breathes smoke over him as it licks and pants against his skin. Its tongue is rough when it finds one of his nipples and he shuts his eyes, tries to turn away.

The hound must notice his movement because it nudges his head with its own, charred fur dropping off its skull as it rolls him back around. Dean’s so beyond the point of terror that even its burning orange eyes barely get a twitch out of him as they sizzle a scarce inch from his own.

It licks over his face, across his nose and jaw. It’s loud and warm and it jams the tip of its tongue into his ear so he can _hear_ just how wet it is.

“Stop,” he pleads, trying to roll away. It ignores him and licks his ear again before creeping back across his cheek. He doesn’t have the energy to cry, not properly, but the hound licks at the tears as they leak out of his eyes and hums low in its belly when the salt smokes it gently. Then it tracks over to his mouth and that’s it, Dean’s got nothing left to give. He taps the fuck out as its tongue presses between his lips.

“Thank God we got out of there,” Cas says, and hands him a dirty rag.

Dean hums and wipes his hands. The car is freshly oiled and Bon Jovi is playing softly in the background.

The hound’s tongue explores the roof of his mouth, and the sensitive gap between his lips and teeth. Dean checks the battery cable and takes the flat headed screwdriver that Cas holds out. They’re in the bunker’s garage and they’re safe. Cas is next to him and Sam is whistling nearby.

His lips fall open as the hound shoves its tongue as far as it can get. It’s wet and wriggly and warm at the back of his throat where his body gags mechanically, closing tight around it.

Dean pops the top of a beer, hands it to Sam. Another for Cas, who doesn’t drink except here when Dean hands it to him with a smile. They’re watching the sunset, or maybe they’re still in the bunker. Dean pops another beer for himself.

Somewhere far away the hound grows bored with his mouth and pads back down his body where a fresh cramp squeezes a fresh thin line of fluid from his insides. This time the hound doesn’t settle for licking at his rim and it follows the fluid back to the source, pushing its tongue easily inside. Dean doesn’t even tremble. There’s no resistance. He’s clinking his bottle with Sam’s. He’s elbow deep in his car. He’s so very, very far away it feels like he might not ever come back.

The hound licks lazy and slow, cleaning his insides as fastidiously as it cleaned his skin. It draws out to swallow before plunging back in again. The black writhing mess behind its ribs coils and pulses.

Someone might be calling for Dean, begging him to look at them, but Dean doesn’t even blink, doesn’t even twitch when the hound—apparently satisfied—pulls out one final time and breathes a roll of smoke over his crotch. Its tongue wraps around his cock and squeezes but Dean’s too far away to feel it.

 _“DEAN!”_ someone shouts.

“Family business,” Dean murmurs at the ceiling. He’s on a hunt. Sam’s in the passenger seat. His dick refuses to harden but the hound settles in, alternating between licking against him and then into him.

There’s the gentle _snick_ of an opening door and an angel steps into the cell. “Having fun?” She sneers down at him. Dean doesn’t answer. The hound doesn’t even look up as it continues to work his dick. The angel is grey, cold. She’s… she’s here to hurt him. Some desperate survival instinct draws him almost to the surface but the hound’s teeth prick gently at the fragile skin behind his balls and he’s gone, he’s back in the bunker. He’s loading shells into his gun, methodical and slow.

The angel asks for a spell, and when she doesn’t get it she snarls. She threatens and curses and says something in a language that has the hound’s ears pricking.

Maybe Dean should hide, or fight, but the words find nowhere to land. The hound finally gets a reaction out of his body, but there’s no one home to worry about it.

“I’ll check the oil again,” he says, as the hound huffs a billow of smoke across his hardening cock.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	8. Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll never get it away while its mate still lives,” Cas says, and Sam makes a wounded sound at the word _mate_ applied to his brother and the thing between his legs.

Dean’s facing him but there’s not a single flicker of recognition in his eyes when Sam yells at him, yells _for_ him.

The slack expressionless glaze is somehow worse than the screaming. Sam’s dealt with pain before. He’s dealt with _Dean’s_ pain before. But this… this he doesn’t know how to deal with. There’s absolutely no reaction on Dean’s face as the hound wraps its tongue around his cock. There’s nothing to indicate discomfort, or embarrassment, or even arousal as Sam can’t help but see him chub so slightly under the hound’s ministrations.

He doesn’t want to watch. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, but he’s helpless.

“Having fun?” Puriel smiles coldly from the other end of the room.

“Stop this,” Sam begs. “We’ll give you anything… anything you want.”

“I want the spell,” she hisses, and that’s the one thing… the one thing they don’t have. The one thing they could bargain with and it doesn’t even exist.

“Please,” Cas urges beside him. “Puriel, end this. There’s no point.”

“Everything has a point, Castiel. Have you forgotten the Father’s teachings so soon after you betrayed your family for them?”

“This is not part of God’s plan,” Cas tells her as the hound’s smoky breath cloys and clings to Dean’s thighs.

“No,” she agrees. “There’s a new world order. And we need Raphael to implement it. Castiel, _give me the spell._ Your humans don’t have to die in pain. We’ll return them to earth whole and unharmed.” It’s a lie so blatant Sam would laugh if he wasn’t still staring at the place where the hound’s tongue buries itself in Dean’s unresponsive body.

Their silence is telling enough, and she curses. “Have it your way, traitor.” She says something in the strange alien language, and the hound’s char-blackened ears prick up, though it doesn’t move from its place between Dean’s legs. Puriel repeats herself and the hound, almost rebelliously, twists the serpentine length of its tongue around Dean’s dick, glaring at her. “Come here,” she snaps in English when the hound refuses to move.

“You’ll never get it away while its mate still lives,” Cas says, and Sam makes a wounded sound at the word _mate_ applied to his brother and the thing between his legs.

 _“Cas,”_ he breathes, but Cas isn’t listening.

“Guess you didn’t consider that when you brought a hellhound here,” Cas taunts, and Sam feels the blood drain out of his face so fast he’s at risk of passing out.

“Don’t think this will save him from anything,” Puriel snaps. “The bond will reset when your precious human is killed.” An angel blade slips into her hand, seemingly out of nowhere, and Sam can’t help but lean forward. He wants it. He _wants_ it. He wants to bury it in Puriel’s fucking heart.

She doesn’t even look at him. She stalks to Dean’s naked body, flicking her fingers once to throw the hound out of the way. Dean doesn’t so much as twitch even when Sam screams a warning.

Cas, beside him, is steadfastly quiet.

“DEAN!” Sam shouts. His voice turns into a roar except he’s not the one roaring. The hound launches itself at Puriel with a bellow like it’s shaking the bowels of hell. Puriel falls backwards as the hound snaps at her raised hands. The pressure holding Sam’s head in place is finally released. The angel blade clatters to the concrete and Sam jumps for it, though he’s pulled up just shy by the collar. Cas hauls him back.

“Don’t distract the hound,” he urges. Sam looks up to see it snapping and growling at Puriel as she dodges its teeth.

“It can’t hurt her,” he whispers back.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Cas says, chin lowered and a look of righteous fury on his face. The hound slashes out and catches Puriel’s bicep with one claw. Her grey suit rips and the skin beneath it glows blue for a second. Sam’s eyes widen.

“Dean,” he calls as quietly as he can, not looking away from where Puriel furiously snaps at the hound in the alien language. “Dean, wake up, wake up.”

Puriel flicks her fingers and the hound gets thrown against the far wall again, though the impact barely shakes it as it bounds back to where she’s picked up the angel blade, pointing it at Dean. The hound gets its massive body between them, thin tail swishing viciously. Its claws gouge the concrete like a hot knife through butter.

“You’ll get him back,” Puriel tells it waspishly. “Now _move.”_ She repeats whatever she’s been saying in the alien language but the hound just backs up closer to Dean’s body, hindpaws moving restlessly above Dean’s head as it steadfastly ignores whatever orders it’s being given.

 _“Sam.”_ Cas tugs at his arm, pointing with as little movement as possible. “The chains.”

The hound’s claws have shredded parts of the concrete and as it shifts Sam sees. There, above Dean’s head, the chains tethering him to the floor have been separated as easily as if they were made of putty.

“Dean,” he whispers, desperate. “Dean, please. Dean, look at me.”

Dean’s chest is rising with each breath, but he may as well be dead for all the reaction he gives to Sam’s calls. Above his head the hound backs up further, its dripping cock swinging between its legs, bumping his slack hands.

“Enough of this,” Puriel snaps, and she flicks her fingers again. The hound digs its claws in and scores deep grooves in the concrete as it slides across the floor. It barely hits the wall at all this time, as though it’s fighting Puriel’s grace. Puriel grits her teeth and raises her hand, chanting quickly. The hound flings itself at her and she doesn’t finish the spell as she jumps out of the way. Her grey shoes kick the end of the chain backwards.

Sam and Cas jump forward, scrabbling for it. Cas can’t reach but Sam has a few extra inches and his fingers close around the metal. The ends are sharp and dangerous where the hound’s claws sliced through at an angle. One of Dean’s wrists is so swollen the chain is cutting into it and Sam apologises silently before _yanking_ him back. Puriel lands against the concrete where Dean had just been laying, her grey suit smearing into the blood there as the hound circles around. Cas catches Dean’s forearms and drags him back as soon as he’s close.

The hound looks away from Puriel in favour of jumping onto Dean’s legs. It snarls at them and Sam falls back so fast he almost brains himself on the wall. Its fangs are each an inch long and its open mouth looks like a cavern of needles. Its shoulders are hunched up and its head lowers so its horns point towards them.

“We’re not hurting him,” Cas says on Sam’s other side, gently lowering his hold until Dean’s laying back on the ground.

Sam holds his hands up, palms out. “We’re friends,” he promises, his mouth so dry he’s shocked he can say anything at all.

“She’s no friend,” Cas says, and points slowly, so slowly, at where Puriel is standing up. There’s a thin trail of blood coming out of the corner of her mouth and she wipes it away with the edge of one sleeve.

“You stupid mutt.” Her face goes white with rage as she examines the blood on her sleeve. “You answer to _me.”_ She levels her blade at it. “Now _heel.”_

The hound lowers its head at the word but doesn’t step away from Dean’s body.

“She’s going to hurt him,” Sam tells it, and it casts one burning orange eye at him before its rotten lips peel back from its teeth and it growls. The smoke behind its ribs vibrates and twists. Puriel starts chanting again. “She’s going to kill him!” Sam says desperately, and he doesn’t know if the hound can hear, or even understand, but it turns its scorching gaze on Puriel, barks once, and attacks.

There are no careful manoeuvres. They don’t circle each other, calculating. Puriel just barely gets her blade between the hound’s teeth and her throat and she has no time for chanting as she’s forced backwards across the cell, parrying wildly. The tail gets her once across her cheek and again across a thigh before she severs the tip. The hound barely notices, still advancing even as it leaks something thick and black from its wound.

“Heel!” she says again, suddenly sounding less sure. She starts to back towards the door.

The hound darts in, faster than its bulk would seemingly allow. It drags its claws across her stomach, and she slashes at its face.

Sam presses the back of one hand to Dean’s forehead and Dean’s cold, so cold. “Wake up,” he begs. “Dean, come on. Wake up.” Cas throws his coat over Dean’s body and untangles the chain from his wrists but neither of them try to move him again.

“S’out the back,” Dean mumbles, eyes not even focused in the same place.

There’s a scream from the other end of the cell and Sam looks up to see the hound’s claws dig into Puriel’s chest. She slams the angel blade into its shoulder and it roars, listing sideways as its leg collapses under it. Puriel gives a triumphant shout and holds a bloodied hand up to start chanting again. The hound writhes under the influence of the words, floundering onto its side. The smoke beneath its ribs leeches out to anchor it to the ground and its severed tail lashes the air like a whip.

Sam’s fingers clench automatically against Dean’s shoulder and he shakes him hard, harder than before.

“Heater’s out,” Dean tells him blankly. The hound looks over and the ember of its eyes fire. It pulls itself back upright, drawing its smoky insides after it. Puriel holds her hand further out and chants louder, tripping over the words in her haste. The hound shakes itself, hesitates for a moment and then, almost faster than Sam can see, its jaws gape wide before snapping closed over her arm, ripping it off at the elbow with a wet sucking sound that’s followed immediately by Puriel’s shriek.

Blood jets out of the stump in pulses as she flails backwards. She stares at it as though she doesn’t know what she’s seeing. Blue light flares out to quell the bleeding and in the eye-searing flash the hound springs off its back legs to bury its claws in her throat. The blue light stutters and flares and stutters again and the hound drags her to the ground.

“Help me,” Puriel gurgles, blood spilling down her face and neck. She clutches for the blade still buried in the hound’s shoulder and it clatters free as the hound extends its claws. The blue glow of her grace increases in intensity until Sam has to blink.

“Holy shit,” he manages and covers his face just in time as her eyes burn white and she convulses, throwing blazing light over the room. When he looks back up the hound is retracting its claws and tipping off her body. Huge black wings are stamped on the walls and floor. The hound whines pitifully and shakes its head before swinging around to look straight at them. One of its eyes is dull like a dying fire but the other burns with malice.

“Cas,” Sam holds his palms out, his elation disappearing as fast as it had arrived. “Cas, what do we—?”

The hound limps towards them, black blood leaking down its leg to curdle and boil on the concrete. Cas touches Dean’s forearm and the hound growls at them, so low and threatening that Cas whips his hand back immediately.

“Dean,” Sam whispers. _“Dean.”_

The hound gets close enough to press a heavy paw to Dean’s ankle and it slides him across the floor. Sam scrabbles, terrified that he’ll lose his hold, but the hound stops just shy of Sam’s furthest reach, leaving him stretched across the concrete with one hand gripping Dean’s uninjured forearm and the collar digging into his neck.

“Please,” he begs. “Don’t hurt him. There’s not… If he dies again he’ll die for real.”

The hound isn’t even listening. It looks exhausted. It swipes the coat off Dean’s body and licks his chest and neck sluggishly, like it’s looking for comfort. Dean twitches, just barely, and Sam almost cries with relief before he sees what Dean’s reacting to. The hound is panting into his skin and its cock is dripping and hard, searching between his legs.

 _“No,”_ Cas breathes from behind him.

The hound levers itself down and its cock squirms like it’s alive. Dean gives an all-over shudder.

“’S it?” he groans.

“Dean? Wake up!” He squeezes Dean’s arm. Too desperate. But Dean coughs, jerks, and his back arches off the concrete so suddenly Sam only barely keeps his grip. Dean cries out wordlessly, tugging on Sam’s hold.

“Dean, it’s me! It’s Sam! Don’t, I—” Dean wrenches his arm away and Sam clings on. “Dean, _stop!_ It’s me!”

The hound snuffles at Dean’s bare chest like his juddering is little more than a shiver. It crawls into place between Dean’s legs and Sam can’t… he can’t look. Not again. He focuses on Dean’s face and hauls backwards as best as he can, repercussions be damned, but the hound’s weight holds Dean in place. It slinks further forward, twitching and panting, and Dean’s eyes open so wide the whites threaten to swallow him whole. There’s still not an ounce of recognition there, replaced instead with blind, directionless panic.

“Dean! Wait!” Dean flings himself forward, then back. The back of his head ricochets off the concrete and his free arm—the injured one—slaps uselessly at the hound’s chest. Sam has both hands wrapped around Dean’s other wrist. “Dean, stop! It’s me!”

“Sam, don’t let go!” Cas is at the end of his own chain, trying to reach. Dean throws himself to the side and his shoulder wrenches around after him. The hound flops down and rests its head beside Dean’s, riding his jerks with ease. Ribbons of smoke curl out of its nose and caress Dean’s skin. Black blood dribbles down to meet it. It purrs contentedly, tongue lolling out against Dean’s cheek. Its tremendous bulk keeps Dean’s lower half pinned even as Dean throws his body weight around like he’s so desperate to get out he’ll rip his own torso in two. Dean yells wildly and his eyes roll like he’s not even seeing what’s around him.

“Dean!” Cas calls. “Dean, pay attention!”

Dean’s so far from paying attention it would be laughable in any other situation. Sam feels something hard press against his shoulder. Cas is trying to hand him the stake.

“I can’t reach,” he cries. The hound is too far away for him to use the stake as a weapon.

“Give it to Dean!”

Dean hurls himself upwards, straining at the weight of the hound and Sam’s fingers around his wrist. Sweat and blood loosen Sam’s grip. Soon he won’t have a hold on Dean at all. He scrabbles one-handed for the stake until Cas gets it to him. He holds it against Dean’s palm.

“Take it! Dean, take it!” The hound blinks at them slowly, rolling its shoulders and blowing smoke. It doesn’t make any move to stop them. Perhaps it doesn’t realise what they’re trying to do. Sam presses the stake’s grip into Dean’s hand. Dean’s fingers flex spasmodically, grabbing then releasing.

The room goes suddenly red. There’s no obvious source for the light but it brightens and dims. A siren wails in the distance. The hound lifts its head to look curiously at the slowly flashing lights.

“I thought Puriel said this place was hidden from Heaven!” Sam gasps. Castiel doesn’t bother replying. Maybe there was an automatic alarm for dead angels in the prison. Sam presses the stake’s hilt even harder into Dean’s palm. “Take it! Dean, it’s a weapon!”

The red light makes all the blood look clear. The hound’s orange eye burns bright every time the light dims. It sniffs the air delicately, and something oozes out of its empty eye socket.

“Dean,” Cas urges. “Take the weapon. You have to take it now.” Dean screams wordlessly, flailing and unresponsive. There’s nothing but panic in his eyes. The red light turns his skin a gruesome colour.

“Dean, _listen,_ ” Sam begs. His fingers slip on Dean’s wrist and he tries to jam the stake into his grip.

“I love you,” Cas says suddenly. “Dean, I love you. It’s me, it’s Cas. I love you and if you’ve ever loved me I need you to _hold on.”_

Dean screams again and his eyes roll away and Sam doesn’t know what else they can do but then Dean’s eyes roll backwards, towards where Cas is still telling him to _hold on, I love you, take the weapon._

The wailing siren sounds closer and the hound looks around, tongue lolling as it opens its mouth in a cavernous yawn. Sam’s fingers loosen and Dean’s wrist rips from his grip. The stake with it.

“Dean!” he cries. The hound looks round at his shout, still yawning, and with an immense heave Dean jams the end of the stake into the roof of its mouth.

Sam hears his own heartbeat once, thunderous in the terrifying second of silence. Then there’s a howl like rending metal, like the pits of hell have opened up and the souls within are screaming all at once. Sam can _feel_ his eardrums rupturing. It’s so painful he can’t think, can’t _breathe._ The howl is ripping the oxygen out of the air. His throat closes over and he can’t do anything but cover his head with his hands and choke. Cas does the same beside him but Dean… Dean’s lips are pulled back in a snarl and the blood dripping from his ears looks clear in the red light. He doesn’t even flinch. He shoves the stake higher. Smoke and fire pour out of the hound’s mouth to wrap around Dean’s hands, bubbling and writhing and burning Dean’s skin as the hound screams and _screams._

 _“Fuck you,”_ Dean mouths, and Sam gets a front row ticket to the gruesome sight of the stake pushing up through the hellhound’s empty eye socket as its own weight bears it down towards Dean’s chest.

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Cas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> escape!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today! But the good news is I should be back to regular bi-weekly updates now :) Although, as someone who has never once kept an update promise, you should take this planned schedule with a grain of salt.
> 
> Thanks as always to [Silver](http://silver9mm.tumblr.com/) who has taught me, that I, don't know what a comma is, or where, it's, sup,p,osed, to go,,,,

He’s useless without his grace. He can’t even heal his own ears. Everything has gone distant and distorted. There’s a deafening ringing that Castiel knows will soon drown even those remnant sounds out.

The red lights are flashing even slower. At their darkest he can barely see Dean in front of him and at their brightest everything is so washed out as to appear surreal.

“Sam,” he calls, not even hearing his own voice. He shakes Sam’s shoulder. “Sam! The claws!” Sam is still covering his ears and his mouth is open. He might be screaming, though there’s no way to tell. Castiel points at Dean’s body, just out of reach, and Sam blinks, shakes himself. He stretches out again, snagging Dean’s closest hand. Dean grips back weakly. Whatever burst of adrenaline had killed the hound is fading fast. Castiel tugs on Sam’s arm. _Bring him here, give him to me._ Sam hauls backwards as hard as he can, sliding Dean and the hound a few inches closer. Dean groans and his head falls back. He blinks, chest hitching, and mouths Castiel’s name. Reaches for him dazedly even though Sam’s still holding his arm. But Castiel… he can’t offer the comfort Dean seeks. A fresh host will arrive any moment. They have no way of knowing if any other angels will be sympathetic to their cause, but Castiel assumes not.

Sam’s feet scrabble on the concrete, trying to find purchase as he drags Dean another inch closer until he’s within Castiel’s reach. His hand flops uselessly towards Castiel’s knee but Castiel can’t give himself even a moment to provide relief. If he so much as cups Dean’s cheek he’ll never be able to stop.

He grabs the hound’s horn instead of Dean’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Sam’s shout comes from across an ocean. Castiel ignores him and plants his feet, using both hands to pull. He tugs its enormous head over Dean’s, trying to ignore the feeble twitch of Dean’s hand as he tries to resist. When the hound is close enough Castiel switches his grip to its paw, and Sam figures it out.

Dean’s hand finally stops its weak attempts at resistance and he slumps, out cold. Castiel needs to check on him, needs to stop the bleeding in his sides, his neck, his shoulders. But there’s no time to worry, there’s no time to pause. He leans as far forward as the chains will allow and uses the hound’s claw to awkwardly slash at his own neck. He doesn’t get it right and there’s a terrible screech of metal that he feels more than hears as the collar only partially severs. The paw is too heavy and Sam has to support the weight so he can get a better grip and slash again, almost, one more time, again, until the metal finally falls free. The red light dims but he doesn’t need its macabre glow to tell that he’s cut through the skin of his own neck, too. He can feel a damp warmth spread down to the collar of his shirt.

He had hoped that his grace would return with the loss of the collar but he doesn’t have time to mourn his thwarted optimism. He uses his hip to toss the weight of the hound closer to Sam, and then falls to his knees at Dean’s side. There’s a bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth, wobbling unsteadily as Dean’s breathing gets shallower.

At least he’s breathing.

Castiel puts a hand on his chest and begs begs _begs_ for his grace to answer his call, but Dean’s breath rattles just as haltingly as before. There’s not much left to him.

“Stay with me,” Castiel tells him, even though he knows it’s a futile request. Dean is as capable of obeying as he is of healing himself. They’re out of options. Without Puriel Dean will die properly, actually, irreversibly.

Sam appears at his elbow and Castiel should hesitate, he really should. But he doesn’t. He grabs Sam’s hand and yanks him to his knees at Dean’s side. He pushes Sam to the floor, apologises silently, and plunges a hand into Sam’s chest.

Sam’s scream is loud even in the deafening ringing, but his soul is quiet, so quiet. It’s _singing_ and Castiel is tired. Tired enough to fall into its lull. It would be so easy to rest here, to never go back… but Dean is dying at his knees and Castiel can save him. _Sam_ can save him. He doesn’t fall into Sam’s soul but instead he digs his fingers into it, no time for delicacy.

Sam claws at his wrist, instinctively trying to draw him out, but his soul doesn’t even fight. Souls never do. They are the peace and welcome at the centre of all living things and Castiel draws it into himself. Sam strains beneath him and Castiel feels what he feels. The cold concrete behind him. The wound at the back of his head and the remnant taste of Dean in his mouth. There’s a hand in his chest, touching the most intimate part of him. Sam’s soul is battered and old but it’s strong. It glows all the stronger beneath the scars.

“Take it!” Sam is shouting. Castiel is shouting with Sam’s voice. “Take it!” Sam knows what he’s trying to do, even as his body resists.

Castiel feels the hand withdraw even as he is the one withdrawing it. Sam goes limp and Castiel holds a sliver of his soul’s energy tight, plunging it into Dean’s chest instead.

He’s kneeling on the floor. He’s lying on it. The hound is immense inside him but his muscles are too weak to expel the intrusion. He could die right here, he thinks. It would be a peaceful end. His neck feels wrong. There’s a hand on his chest. _In_ his chest. It’s _his_ hand but there’s not… there are too many wounds. Souls are not the same as grace, and he’s not strong enough. He’s Dean. He’s Cas. He’s neither.

“Dean,” he whispers, though the sound never makes it past his lips.

He wants to heal the damage between his legs, where the shame is almost as strong as the pain. But though the wounds are numerous and terrible they won’t cause death. At least not first. He uses the sliver of soul to patch the slices in his side instead. The claws had been strong enough to reach the bones of his ribs, and the bleeding will be the first thing to kill him. He replaces as much blood as he can before the pilfered energy runs dry and he pulls away, releasing his hold until he’s just Castiel again.

There’s colour in Dean’s cheeks and he’s blinking sluggishly, but he doesn’t respond when Castiel taps him gently.

“Dean, come back. Wake up.”

Sam struggles to his knees at Castiel’s side. He looks haggard but he’s in no immediate danger, though the wound on his soul will not heal quickly. With the dwindling spark of stolen energy Castiel heals their ears.

“Sam, we have to get out of here. Can you wake him up?”

Sam nods and replaces Castiel’s hands with his own, cradling Dean’s head carefully. He whispers something incoherent and frames Dean’s face with his fingers. Castiel lurches to his feet and staggers to Puriel’s body. He stoops to collect her blade and clenches it in his right hand. The lights dim and brighten again and Puriel looks almost peaceful surrounded by the macabre reflected glow of her blood. He flips the blade in his hand and slams it into her forehead, feels the bone shattering there, withdraws it, slams it into her chest. She makes a weak wet noise each time but it’s not really her, just dead meat. He retrieves the blade one last time and turns his back on her as the lights dim again.

Sam is wiping the stains off Dean’s face, carding his hair. Dean’s head lolls in his hands, nodding at whatever Sam is saying and Castiel hates to draw him away but they can’t stay here forever. Dean isn’t out of the woods and without help he’ll die just as surely as he would have without Sam’s soul.

Castiel reaches beneath the hound’s hips and attempts to extricate it from where it died while still buried in Dean’s body. He tries to be gentle but there’s no easy way to do it. Dean cries out and writhes and he and Sam pretend not to notice. The hound slips free, still wet and dripping. It burns Castiel’s hand and dread settles low in his stomach when he sees that Dean’s skin is no longer affected.

They have no time to worry about it. Together they roll the hound the rest of the way off. Its bones creak and protest and its ribs echo hollowly over the place where its smoky insides used to be.

They each take one of Dean’s arms, slinging him in between them. Dean barely manages to hold his weight but it’s enough, it has to be enough. Dean resists weakly but they get him balanced just as two angels shoulder into the room.

“It’s the traitor!”

“On your knees, Castiel.”

They advance with their blades out.

“Puriel is dead,” Castiel tells them, not daring to release his hold on Dean’s back. The angels hesitate. “We killed her, and then this hound, and we’ll kill you too if we have to.”

It’s not much of a threat with one of them so clearly incapacitated, but the angels pause in their advance, looking at Puriel and then back. One of them says something that Castiel doesn’t catch.

“Move,” he warns and raises Puriel’s blade.

They move.

Castiel and Sam don’t bother looking back at them as they stagger out the door, Dean suspended in between them.

Heaven’s layout is malleable and ever-changing, but there are certain points that remain static. Castiel uses them to navigate towards the exit. They encounter only one other angel, who sees them from the end of a hallway and promptly flees in the other direction. The lights continue to blink evilly around them.

The portal glows welcomingly and they lurch towards it. Castiel doesn’t bother stepping through. He falls forward, through it, past it, dragging Sam and Dean behind him. The red lights get washed out, replaced by darkness and the hint of stars.

“We made it,” he breathes, and his breath fogs out in front of him. Beside him, Dean slumps to the sandpit, unconscious.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ,,,,,,,,,,,


	10. Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hospital is ten minutes away but he breaks every road rule he knows and makes it there in five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I would give you bi-weekly updates but apparently i LIED. And you should never trust me ever again. Please accept this nice long chapter as penance.
> 
> Thanks to [Silver](https://silver9mm.tumblr.com) for doing a stellar job of making this readable. Love u so much bbi <3

The car looks too decrepit to move but it sputters to life when Sam hot-wires it. Cas hauls Dean’s unresponsive body into the back seat and follows him in, barely closing the door behind him before Sam guns the engine and peels away from the playground. He can hear Cas whispering to Dean but he doesn’t let himself look in the rearview. He doesn’t want to see the pale limp stretch of his brother when he’s already so familiar with what his dead body looks like. He thinks he can hear the forced pressure of Cas’s breath and it sounds like Dean’s lungs are only moving because Cas is compelling them to but he can’t think about that, can’t let himself think about Dean dying in the back seat of a stranger’s car. He’s half-dead himself and there’s a soul-deep ache beneath his ribs that feels like Cas’s hand is still in there, but he can’t—he _won’t_ —let himself believe that it was for nothing.

The hospital is ten minutes away but he breaks every road rule he knows and makes it there in five. Screeches to a halt outside the emergency doors and runs in ahead of Cas to yell for help, _please, my brother, dying, please._ There’s an intolerable few seconds where nothing happens but there’s blood down the front of his shirt and a nurse starts gesturing and someone says _please, he’s my brother,_ and then Cas is dragging Dean through the doors and it happens fast after that. A stretcher and someone crying and there are other people in the waiting room watching with hands over their mouths, pulling out their phones to film it when a doctor yells for an intubator and a nurse climbs over Dean’s body to start compressions while they roll the stretcher through the swinging doors. He tries to follow but there’s a weight on his arm, polite and restrained and when he looks down there’s a nurse at his elbow with a smile and a light she’s shining at his eyes and she’s gesturing at a seat but that isn’t—

“—your injuries,” she says from far away. Fingers probe the back of his head and he pushes them away. He tries to turn towards the swinging doors where Dean disappeared but he’s not facing the doors anymore. He’s facing the floor, and it’s rushing up to meet him.

“My brother,” he says, bewildered, and then he’s out.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up half a day later with a pounding headache and a numbed patch on the back of his head where he guesses they shaved his hair. It takes him five minutes to lever himself upright and another five to convince his stomach that there’s nothing to bring up.

 _Dean,_ he thinks desperately.

He gets himself standing, and after that it’s not too hard to wobble towards the bag holding his dirty clothes so he can painstakingly dress. He’s clumsier than he should be, even accounting for whatever painkillers they’ve given him. And he’s sick with apprehension. He struggles with his belt before foregoing it entirely to head into the hallway. If Dean’s alive (and that’s an _if_ he doesn’t dwell on for too long) then he’ll be in ICU. He tries to walk like he’s a visitor instead of a patient even though the headache is only getting worse and his ribcage feels strangely splintered. He doesn’t dare ask for directions to the ICU in case he gets shooed away, but it turns out to be well signposted anyway.

There are dozens of beds but Dean isn’t hard to find. Cas is sitting in the chair next to him, Dean’s hand clutched between his own. Bandages cover his shoulder and collarbone. He gives Sam a watery smile as Sam staggers the last two feet, careful of the instruments in his way and of his own vertigo as the floor tilts beneath him. Dean’s pale and still and surrounded by beeping machines and drips of blood and saline.

“He’s alive,” Cas says before Sam can even ask.

“Dean?” he rasps. There’s no response. When he lifts the bleached white blankets he sees myriad bandages wrapped around Dean’s chest and sides.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” Cas says quietly, stepping to his other side. “But they can’t identify the venom.”

“Right.” He gently replaces the blankets. Dean’s pale and cold but his chest is rising in slow, even breaths.

“It’s a shame we didn’t see what bit him.” Cas looks at him hard. Then at the rest of the room where nursing staff hurry past.

Sam groans, scrubs his eyes. He feels like he’s been hit by a semi. “Right.” There are softer, gauzier bandages over Dean’s throat but there’s something leaking through them already. Something grey and watery. “Cas,” he murmurs, pointing.

“I know,” Cas whispers back. “They can’t close the wounds.”

Sam grits his teeth. “Take more,” he rasps. “Take what you need.”

Cas doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. And he doesn’t try to dissuade him. “Dean wouldn’t want you to,” he says instead, but Dean’s half-dead and still dying and Sam’s already grabbing for Cas’s hand, tugging him through a side door to the attached bathroom. There are metal railings on the wall and a big red button with a sign. _Press for help._ He imagines punching it.

Cas closes the door behind him and crams up into Sam’s space. The vertigo’s back and Sam sways dangerously sideways but doesn’t go anywhere. Cas steadies him and puts a hand against his chest.

“You’re sure?” he asks, quiet, and Sam covers his mouth with one hand, grabs the nearest railing with the other. He nods at Cas and then his chest explodes except it’s not his chest, it’s lower, it’s deeper. It’s the place where Lucifer touched him and it feels like he’s flayed open when Cas touches him there too, fingers soft like sometimes Lucifer’s were before they got hard. Fingers curling like Dean’s did around the stake impaled in his own stomach. He can feel the epicentre of his own pain and Cas’s, too. A tug, a pull, and he’ll never get used to the way a soul can beg for mercy. The hand retracts and he would fall on his face if it weren’t for Cas’s fist moving from his chest to his hip, his other hand covering Sam’s over his mouth where he can feel how his teeth have punctured his palm.

He eases the strain of his jaw and the taste of blood is entirely too familiar when it gets beneath his tongue. His throat hurts like he’s been screaming for hours.

Cas’s fist is clenched around nothing, or maybe something that Sam can’t see. He realises belatedly that he’s holding Cas’s shirt with one hand, and he releases his grip. As soon as he’s free Cas steps back, opens the bathroom door. There’s a doctor outside staring daggers and Sam mumbles an excuse at her— _was too weak to go by myself_ —but the glare he gets in return has nothing to do with a patient using the bathroom and everything to do with two men grunting and panting in an enclosed space.

Cas takes no mind and steps to Dean’s bedside, flicking the curtains closed behind him.

“Sorry,” Sam says automatically, not sure why. His chest aches and his palm, too. He wonders if there’s still blood on his mouth. He licks his lips and the doctor’s gaze darkens.

“Sam Wood?” He recognises the name from one of a dozen identities and wonders how much information Cas has given them already.

“Yes,” he says. Wipes his mouth. Can’t stop thinking about the blood there. Dean had coughed blood too.

“I have some questions for you.” She hands Sam some forms, neatly stapled in one corner which is so incongruous with the situation Sam doesn’t even know where to start. Oh God, do they really have to do this now? “I have some questions about the nature of your brother’s injuries.”

“The nature,” Sam parrots back, sore and tired and two seconds away from letting the floor greet him again.

“We conducted an S. A. K. Do you know what that is?”

He doesn’t but he does, oh he does. He knows exactly the kind of injuries a doctor might find on Dean’s body. “Don’t,” he begs. Dean had begged too but it hadn’t stopped then, either.

The scorn on the doctor’s face gives way to sadness and maybe Sam had imagined the darkness, earlier. Maybe he’ll always see darkness now.

“If there’s any more information you can share with us, about the attack, or anything else, we need to hear it. Anything might help. Or you can write it down,” she nods at the papers in Sam’s hand, “and tell the police when they get here.”

“When the police get here,” he says hollowly.

“They’ll catch them.” The doctor is confident, dark again. “There was a lot of DNA.”

Of course there was. Sam feels sick. But he’s been a hunter longer than he’s been a victim and it’s natural to question it, push harder. “Has the DNA already been tested?”

“It’s been sent. Your cousin already signed the forms.”

_Dammit, Cas._

“How long until the tests come back?”

“A few days. Three at most. The police will come by with the results, though you should talk to them sooner if you can.”

Sam nods even though he has no intention of sticking around that long. Three days. Two to be safe. He doesn’t know what kind of results they’re going to get from a DNA test but he knows he doesn’t want to be here when they arrive.

“We’ll talk to them then,” he lies. Maybe he looks too tired for further questions. He _feels_ too tired for further questions. Whatever the cause, the doctor takes it as her cue to leave.

The curtains pull back and Cas peers out. He’s pale but smiling. “The bites are healed,” he says quietly. Sam stumbles over and manages to ease himself into the chair at Dean’s bedside. Dean blinks awake and licks his lips slowly. He lifts a few fingers when Sam leans forward.

“Hey,” Sam says shallowly, weirdly choked up. He wants to hold his brother but doesn’t know where he can touch that isn’t an injury. “How are you feeling?”

Dean’s voice is so dry it’s almost unrecognisable. “Peachy,” he rasps, and Sam does a smile that’s also a wince. Cas carefully tangles their hands together and brings Dean’s blistered and bandaged fingers to his lips.

“You’re alive,” he whispers into the back of Dean’s knuckles. “That’s the important thing.” A corner of Dean’s lip twitches up weakly.

“Chest fucking aches.” His other hand lifts fractionally. He groans softly. “Feels like I’ve been punched in the ribs.” Sam and Cas share a look that Dean isn’t slow enough to miss. His eyes narrow. “What’d you do?” Neither of them answer. “Cas? What’d you do?”

One of the machines starts beeping faster and Cas presses his palm to Dean’s shoulder. “Dean, be still. It was—”

“It was nothing,” Sam interjects, hoping the blood is well and truly gone from his teeth.

“Doesn’t feel like nothing.” Dean’s voice sounds like sandpaper but it’s getting louder, and one of the machines becomes insistent.

Cas hushes him desperately. “I used Sam’s soul to heal your neck,” he rushes, “but we had to, your bites…” He leans forward and peels back the bandages there. Beneath them, Dean’s skin is pale but smooth.

“Thank God,” Sam murmurs, but no sooner have the words left his mouth than a pinprick of grey fluid beads to the surface of Dean’s skin. As he watches, the bead grows, and another appears next to it. “Cas?”

Dean groans and tenses, arching weakly as the wounds reopen one by one. “I’m gonna kick your asses,” he bites out as grey residue leaks down his neck into the pillows beneath his head. The beeping gets faster and Cas looks _devastated._

“That should have worked.” He drops Dean’s hand to touch the wounds but there’s no energy left to reheal them, and the grey fluid drips down his fingers. Sam presses the bandages back into place while Cas mumbles, “That should have worked. The venom can’t possibly—” A nurse trots over and Sam elbows Cas to shut him up.

“Awake, doll?” She fusses with Dean’s machines and produces a tiny remote slotted between the mattress and the bed frame. “You just press this if you’re in pain okay, hon?” She clicks a button twice, and it must be linked to the morphine because Dean’s eyes droop almost instantly. He stares at Cas blearily and lifts one finger off the mattress in accusation.

“No,” he says, emphatic even though he’s half-asleep. Cas just bows his head.

The nurse taps Sam on the shoulder. “You’re the brother, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be up either,” she chastises. “I’ll get someone to bring a wheelchair and your friend can take you back to your room.”

“No, please,” he says earnestly, “I won’t be a bother.” He’s pretty sure they won’t let him sign out for at least a day, but he’s spent enough time around hospitals to know how to get what he wants regardless. “You can keep an eye on me from here and give the bed to someone else.” He looks at her beseechingly and he might not be on his A-game but she smiles at him sadly and pats his cheek. Dean’s machines beep quietly behind his shoulder.

“I’ll watch him,” Cas says gently. The nurse puts her other hand over her heart and pats Cas’s cheek too.

She hesitates but, “Okay, doll,” she says. There’s pity and compassion in her smile. She looks back at Sam and shakes herself a little, raising a finger to tut at him, “But no wandering around, okay?” Sam nods and she leaves them to it. Cas drops his head in his hands as soon as her back is turned.

“’s’okay,” Sam murmurs, already feeling the ache in his chest as he rearranges himself in the chair to lean against the wall. “Cas, it’s okay.” Dean’s eyes are closed but he lowers his voice anyway. “Let me sleep and then you can try again.”

Cas’s face is pale and drawn and he looks like he’s about to argue but whatever he says gets lost as Sam lets the weight in his chest drag him back under.

                                                                  

* * *

 

Dean’s nowhere near ready to be moved but they don’t even get two full days before the police come asking questions. Sam smiles through his exhaustion. Signs some forms. Avoids the questions he can and lies about the ones he can’t and when he’s sure Cas has had enough time to get Dean out he excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

He’s already memorised Dean’s medical charts and he steals as much as he can on his way out the door, apologising silently as he does.

He meets Cas in the loading dock in another stolen car.

“I miss Baby,” Dean mumbles drunkenly from the back seat, shivering beneath the stolen blanket.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll give you what you need,” Ruby croons. Her knife is as bright as her eyes and just as sharp. Sam sucks in a breath and releases it over her collarbones, chasing the heat with his tongue. She laughs and urges him further down. He’s familiar with her belt buckle, and the way her jeans are always too tight. He’s well-practiced at rolling her pants down her thighs, and he knows before he does that she won’t be wearing anything underneath.

He kisses the inside of her knee, then bites hard.

“Make me feel good,” she breathes, and Sam hears the hidden command: _make me come._ Isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that why he’s here? That’s all he’s good for.

He slides his hand up between her thighs until he reaches her cock and that’s… that’s not how this is supposed to go but he licks his lips anyway and ducks down to suck the tip of her into his mouth. It tastes like sweat and unfathomably _human_ even though he knows the sulphur will come later.

“Good boy,” Ruby whispers, her fingers tightening in his hair. He blinks tears out of his eyes and when they drip down his cheeks they taste like sweat, too. The fingers in his hair disappear. He looks up from beneath his eyelashes and it’s Dean looking down at him. There’s blood on his face. Dribbling from the corner of his lips.

“Stop,” Dean begs. “Please, stop, I—”

Sam opens his mouth wider and takes Dean in, as far as he can. He’s surprised by how warm it is and he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. It’s _Dean._ He’s real, alive, _throbbing_ in Sam’s mouth whenever Sam’s tongue finds that sensitive spot beneath the head of his dick.

“Don’t,” Dean gasps, hiccoughing helplessly. “Sammy, _please.”_

Sam licks at his slit easily, like he knows what he’s doing. He _does_ know what he’s doing. He’s more familiar with Dean’s body than he is his own. This is the only dick he’s ever had in his mouth and that’s not something he’s ever going to forget.

“Sam!”

His gut clenches and he needs to get away, needs to be somewhere other than in between Dean’s legs. But instead he just sucks obediently and ignores the ache in his jaw. He tries to tell himself to run but no matter how loud he yells his tongue keeps working, his head keeps bobbing gently.

“Sam, stop, make it _stop.”_

He can’t, he can’t stop it. He can’t even stop himself.

“Please, Sammy!”

“Sam!”

_“Sam!”_

And just like before, he’s searching for the knife beneath his pillow before he’s even awake. His fingers close around the hilt just as the bunker’s ceiling swims into view.

“—a dream, just a dream, just a—”

He lurches forward and brings up last night’s whiskey all over the blanket and his own legs. Cas doesn’t even pretend to act surprised. But he does manage to get out of the line of fire. Sam runs a trembling hand over his face and it takes a few passes before he connects. Cas carefully pulls the knife from his numb fingers.

“’m fine,” Sam mumbles. “Dean?” He doesn’t hear the response as his stomach curls again and he coughs up air that doesn’t taste like anything except bile.

Cas doesn’t bother calling him on the lie. “No change,” he says instead when Sam’s finished coughing, and it’s supposed to be soothing but it isn’t.

Sam’s head thumps back against the pillows and he clumsily shoves the ruined sheets away. It’s been three weeks since they heisted Dean out of the hospital’s back entrance and returned to the bunker, but there hasn’t been any sign of improvement, especially since Dean outright forbade them from using Sam’s soul.

Cas strips the bed quickly, efficiency born of practice. “If you have a shower you can try to get a few more hours of sleep.”

Sam struggles to his feet and heads for the bathroom and doesn’t bother arguing. They both know he’s gotten as much sleep as he’s capable of for now. He hasn’t slept through the night even once since they got out. Not even with the help of Dean’s whiskey.

“Fifteen minutes,” he says hoarsely. “Then we can swap and you can get some rest.”

Like Cas will be any more capable of sleep than Sam is.

The water feels good, though Sam doesn’t feel any warmer even when he turns it all the way to the red. He can’t hear Cas moving outside but he knows that when he gets out the bed sheets will be changed and the fan turned on to air out the stink of nightmare-sweat. Sam clenches his fist against the wall and leans his forehead against it. His ribcage feels split open, like it does constantly these days. He half expects the water to be bloody but it trickles into the drain in smooth clear waves. It’s scalding but he doesn’t move until it runs cold, and even then he thinks about staying. He imagines the water eventually peeling his skin clear off. He imagines a hand forming a fist in his insides.

He fumbles the taps twice before he can turn the water off. Cas says the wounds on his soul will heal eventually, but until then the vivid nightmares and clumsiness are just some of the symptoms he’s learning to deal with.

Five minutes later he stumbles into Dean’s room, his hair still dripping water down the back of his shirt. Cas is sitting cross-legged on the chair next to Dean’s bed. He’s in his usual white shirt and without the trench coat he looks clinical and pale, like he’s just another piece of equipment tapped into Dean’s body.

Dean raises an eyebrow at him. “You forget how to use a towel?”

Sam grunts and takes his customary spot on Dean’s other side. He picks up _The History of Demonik Creatures_ , which thus far hasn’t had anything worthwhile to say except that dogs can be exorcised if the demon is from below the third tier of Hell. Which seems like the kind of crap that a demon might tell a human for a laugh, and has nothing to do with hellhounds, either.

“You know, you could read that in the library.”

“I’m fine here, thanks.” In truth he’s just more comfortable where he can see Dean. Cas glances at him knowingly but doesn’t interject. Dean, however, isn’t as prudent.

“Come on, it must get uncomfortable sitting in that chair half the day.”

“I’d just be sitting in a different chair if I was in the library.”

“Better lighting in there, though.”

“I prefer it here.”

Dean grits his teeth. “I’m not some kind of _invalid_ that needs constant supervision.”

Sam feels a tick developing beneath his eye. “Well maybe if you let Cas use my soul we wouldn’t have to—”

“No! I’ve already told you—”

Sam snaps his book shut and rounds on Dean. “Well, then, you’ll just have to get used to me being here, won’t you!”

“Please,” Cas says, pulling his hand away from Dean’s to raise it placatingly, “there’s no need for this.”

Dean stabs a finger towards Sam. “He’s just waiting for me to go to sleep so he can start shredding his soul up!”

“He’s not going to—”

Sam slams the book on the table. “Oh, you think I _like_ trying to save your ass every five minutes? Why don’t you try it and see how you—”

“Sam, Dean, _please!”_

“Don’t act like such a martyr! You think your damn nightmares don’t wake me up, too?”

Sam’s fists clench and he’s about to let loose on Dean for being such an intolerable _ass_ but just as he opens his mouth, Dean’s eyes lock on something behind Sam’s shoulder and his body seizes up.

“No!” he chokes, and he starts wrestling himself backwards up the bed. The catheter in his left arm rips free and splashes a thin line of fluid up to his shoulder. Sam’s fingers slip in it as he grabs for Dean, pushing him back to the mattress. The argument is instantly forgotten.

“There’s nothing there,” he promises urgently. Dean shudders beneath him but he’s too weak to fight back, his arms like jelly where they land on Sam’s chest, so feeble Sam can’t tell if they’re supposed to be pushing him away or pulling him closer. His legs jerk pitifully, each going in a different direction, and Cas lays himself over Dean’s hips to absorb some of the fight.

“Behind you!” Dean gasps. “Sammy, behind you, it, oh God, it found me!”

Sam fumbles one-handed for the hellhound glasses on the nightstand. He mashes them to his face to look over his shoulder but there’s nothing there. There never is.

“Dean,” he soothes, “it’s not real. I promise, there’s nothing there.” He puts a palm on Dean’s forehead to stop him from braining himself on the headrest, but Dean’s hardly putting up enough of a fight for it to be a real concern anyway. It’s like his body has shut down, even though his eyes are still open and staring. His skin is clammy and ice cold but it warms beneath Sam’s hand. Cas looks curiously at them and then, slowly, shifts his own hand beneath the blanket to grab Dean’s arm. Eventually, Dean stills completely, blinking back to awareness, and Sam rubs his shoulders carefully, trying to ease some warmth into Dean’s core. Everywhere he touches is cold.

Cas frowns slightly as he draws Dean’s arm out from beneath the blanket. His fingers are curled around Dean’s and he looks as though he’s studying their joined hands. Sam gets an unwelcome jolt in the pit of his stomach even though he can’t put his finger on the source of his apprehension.

“Cas,” he starts, but he doesn’t get to voice his concern as Dean groans and throws his free arm over his eyes. He’s trembling only slightly, and Sam and Cas both pretend not to notice. Cas extricates his hand and swabs the crook of Dean’s elbow, and then the back of his hand, searching for a new vein to replace the freed catheter. They’re trying a new regime of fluids since Dean can’t keep up with the dehydration caused by the leaking bites. He rips open a new kit—they’re running low, Sam’s going to have to head into town to steal some more soon—and wriggles into fresh gloves. He works quietly, his frown still in place. Sam replaces the bandages on Dean’s neck just for something to do with his hands, and by the time he’s finished, Dean’s trembling has stopped.

“You’re sure this is a symptom of the venom, not the soul-thing?” Dean mumbles into his elbow.

“Positive,” Cas says quietly, taping the IV into place. “Sam isn’t getting hallucinations.” He pulls Dean’s arm off his face to lace their fingers together and he smiles reassuringly at the expression Dean makes. Dean clumsily squeezes back, his hands barely healed. “But we’ll find a way to fix it.”

 _Don’t make promises we might not be able to keep,_ Sam wants to tell him, but he waits for Dean’s eyes to close in exhaustion before he whispers, “Cas, you’re not powering up fast enough. And if we’re not allowed to use my soul then I’m not seeing a lot of options here.”

Cas is silent for a moment, staring at where his and Dean’s fingers are locked. Dean’s chest rises unsteadily before evening into true sleep. “I might have an idea,” Cas finally says, so quiet Sam has to lean forward to catch it. Cas looks at him suddenly. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me!”

Dean mutters as Cas loosens his hold, but he doesn’t wake up. Cas grips Sam’s shoulder instead. “You’re _really_ not going to like it.”

 

 

 

 


	11. Dean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is in sight! Huge thank you to [Silver](https://silver9mm.tumblr.com) who's busy with her own life but somehow finds time to also come and help me turn this into consumable fic instead of incomprehensible angst.

He drifts eerily through dreams, not quite willing to grab hold of consciousness just yet. He’s _cold._ And he’s been listening to the sound of Sam and Cas turning pages for three weeks now and he’s in no rush to get back to that.

“You can’t be serious,” someone says. They sound shocked or maybe just dazed but either way, they’re not quite interesting enough for Dean to want to wake up and investigate.

“It explains why he’s not regaining his strength. It’s keeping him weak on purpose.”

“He just needs more time to—”

“Blankets and heaters don’t warm him, only you or I can do that.”

“He’s still recovering, he can’t—"

Dean loses the next bit and he almost makes it all the way back to sleep before the other voice explodes.

“There has to be another way!”

“Shuddup,” he mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut tight. The voices ignore him.

“If you have any ideas I’m open to suggestions.”

He’s not fully awake but he’s close enough to it that he can’t hope to miss how the voices—Cas’s and Sam’s—sound more than anything like _fear_.

“Shit. _Shit._ Fine. But I. Dammit! Cas, you’re not exactly _human,_ can you even—”

“Shut up!” he says a little louder. The arguing stops and when he squints up he finds them standing at the end of his bed. Cas has one hand on Sam’s shoulder and another on his chest and for a heart-stopping moment Dean thinks that they’re harvesting Sam’s soul again, but this time he’s awake and he _won’t let them._ “Don’t you dare,” he snarls, lurching up. Cas snatches his hands back and holds them up like Dean’s pointing a gun instead of a shaky finger.

“We’re not,” he says quickly. “We promised we wouldn’t.”

Sam nudges Cas with his shoulder and glances at Dean. “That’s not what we—” He coughs and shakes his head before steadfastly looking at a spot somewhere past Dean’s left ear. “We, I mean, _Cas_ , might have an idea.” He’s inexplicably blushing. “For, uh. For your—” He waves his hand as if to encompass the room, the bed, and all of Dean.

“What kind of idea,” Dean says, instantly suspicious. He knows he’s too weak to stop them if they really want to use Sam’s soul, but there’s no reason to let them in on that. He shuffles as far up the bed as he can and glares at them.

Cas takes his usual seat on Dean’s right and picks up his hand, careful of the IV. His fingers are warm where they curl around Dean’s and Dean’s eyes flick automatically to Sam, but Sam’s never once said anything about the new _thing_ between them and he doesn’t start now. He just stays awkwardly at the end of the bed, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Cas reclaims his attention with a soft, “Dean.” He says it slowly like he’s being careful with Dean’s name. And it’s not a tone that precedes the kind of conversation Dean’s going to like. It’s a tone that says something new is coming and Dean doesn’t even know what it is but he’s already shaking his head.

Cas’s fingers clench, and he’s so _warm,_ right there. Cas say his name again.

“Dean, the hallucinations only happen when we’re not touching you.”

Dean squints at him then looks back over at Sam. Sam won’t meet his eyes. “And?” He feels stretched and defensive. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your body doesn’t know how to fight the venom,” Cas says. “I think,” he hesitates, “I mean, I _believe_ the venom needs to be fought by a… by someone else.”

Dean shakes his head. “’m not using Sam’s soul.”

“I believe the venom will need to be fought in much the same way it was administered.”

Dean’s too tired to puzzle that one out. “Cas,” he warns.

Cas squeezes a fraction harder, and his thumb moves just slightly over the back of Dean’s. He hesitates, caresses again. His voice is soft when he finally asks, “Would you have had me? Before?”

Dean squints up at him, looks at Sam, back at Cas. “Huh?”

“Before the… before Heaven. Would you have been with me? It seemed that… It seemed as though maybe there was a time when you and I…”

“Cas, get to the point.”

Cas tips his head forward and a lock of hair falls over his forehead. Dean wonders when it got that long and how he didn’t notice it growing. “I believe,” Cas says, and Dean knows already that he’s not going to like this, “I believe the hound laid a claim on you that only another claim can undo.”

The hair on Cas’s forehead looks a little limp and Dean wonders if he knows how to wash it or if his grace took care of that before. He wants to push it back off Cas’s face and he wants to turn away and he wants a lot of other things but instead, he just pulls his hand out of Cas’s grip and the thing he ends up saying is, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas murmurs without looking up. And Dean’s so _afraid,_ but he’s always turned his fear into anger. He gets the sudden and violent urge to snarl.

“Oh, you’re _sorry,_ are you?”

Sam shuffles in the corner. “Dean,” he says nervously.

“What? Sam, _what?_ You have something to add to this?”

“I know this isn’t ideal, but—”

“You don’t fucking say!”

“Come on, Dean, we’re just trying to help.”

“Don’t you think you’ve _helped_ enough!” He spits out _helped_ because if he doesn’t then he’ll say it with a cry. The sight of Sam on his knees is still too-fresh so he turns that into anger, too.

“We’re doing the best we can, Dean!”

“Yeah, you’re such a good Samaritan. Bet you were real pleased when you came up with this idea! Great, a way to fix Dean! Super! Just get him to roll over, he’s already done it once!”

Sam takes a step back. “You know that’s not what we think!”

Dean’s had it. He’s _had it._ He wants to cry. He wants to _scream._ He wants to lock himself in an impenetrable dungeon where not even a pack of hellhounds can find him. And it’s so _weak_ because _he’s_ weak. He doesn’t even realise his hands have balled into fists until he feels the pinprick of his nails in his palms. There’s a shadow swirling in his peripheries but if it’s a hellhound it might as well kill him because he’s not doing anyone any good up here. He’s led it straight to them. Fear feels like a ball of ice in his stomach and he wants to spit it straight into Sam’s face. He shivers uncontrollably and Cas tries to take his hand but Dean slaps him away.

“Piss off!” he bellows, and he drags a breath in to yell something else but then Cas grabs at his wrist and he’s still warm, distractingly warm, and as he eases Dean’s fist open to slip his fingers inside the fear pitter-patters away like water down a tin roof.

 _Well, fuck,_ Dean thinks. And then, out loud, “Well, fuck.”

“Your body can’t fight the venom without us,” Cas clarifies, maybe unnecessarily. The warmth from his fingers spreads up Dean’s arm, banishing the ice as it climbs. The shadows at the edge of his vision slink away. He feels like throwing up.

“Dean,” Sam says carefully. Dean waves at him to shut up. He drops his head back against the pillow and stares at the ceiling, cracking and grey and far too familiar a view to be having this conversation under.

“You’re going to fuck me,” he says bitterly. Cas looks away and Dean wants to tell him that he’s not bitter about _Cas,_ he’s always wanted Cas. He’s bitter that this is how it happens, that this is how they’re going to fix him. When he’s cold, and sore, and strung up on a half-dozen meds. He’s bitter that he doesn’t get his chance to heal and be alone and to make this choice when he’s ready.

Sam clears his throat.

 _“What,_ Sam?”

“It. It might not work.”

Dean looks down at Cas’s hand around his own. “It’ll work.” Now that he’s realised it he can’t unfeel it. He knows how _real_ the hallucinations are until someone gets a hand on him. He can _feel_ how warm everyone is and how cold he always feels in comparison. His body hasn’t felt like his own in a long time and there it is; the final nail in the coffin. “It’ll work,” he says again.

“It might not work _with Cas.”_

“What?”

“Angels did this and I… we don’t know if your body will recognise a counter-claim from another angel.”

“Cas is hardly an angel right now.”

“That’s what we’re hoping.”

Well, _that_ sounds foreboding as fuck.

“So, what? I should find a, a hooker or something?” Cas tenses minutely beside him and Sam goes pale.

“Not unless you know any who are also hunters.”

“What?”

Sam looks at Cas and chooses his next words slowly. “It’s possible that… that the venom will… that it might fight back.”

“It _what?”_

“It might not let you go easily.”

Dean groans and Cas slips his other hand around Dean’s forearm, but he’s shaking his head from exhaustion this time and skin contact isn’t going to do anything to help. His stomach heaves uselessly and he again has to fight the urge to puke.

“So, I just have to _hope_ that Cas can fix this?”

“Or… or you choose another hunter to help.”

Dean grits his teeth and wills his stomach calm. “Did you have someone in mind?”

Sam shrugs helplessly. “Dean, I know it’s, it’s not what you, it’s not what either of us want but if I—”

“Sam, don’t you dare.”

“I already know the symptoms and background and—”

Dean has to hold his free hand up and take a shuddering breath because it sounds like Sam’s offering _(don’t think about it)_ like he’s offering to help, and that’s just, just, “No.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“I think you and I might disagree on that strike.”

“It’s already happened before.”

_Don’t think about it._

“That’s not how this works!”

_Sam on his knees._

_Don’t think about it._

“I know, I know, but if I, if I do… _that_ again, or something… else… then you won’t ruin anything between you and Cas.”

Dean holds back a retch only barely. He clenches his teeth and breathes through them. “You think that _matters?”_ he grits out.

“Of course it matters!”

Cas looks like he’s trying to scrunch in on himself. “Sam,” he pleads quietly. “Enough.”

“Yeah, Sam! Enough!”

“I just want you to have the option and to know that you can, you know, that you can choose me and I won’t, I’m not gonna, I mean I know I can do it. I can help. And you can choose.” His voice catches a little and he shrugs as though he thinks he could possibly fool Dean that he’s nonchalant about this. “Autonomy, you know.”

“Fuck you!” he spits. “So my options are to get fucked by an angel who might not even fix me, or get fucked by my own brother. Yeah. _Great_ autonomy, Sam!”

“Don’t think of it like that. Dean, you don’t have to make any choice at all, or we’ve got enough morphine left you don’t even have to be awake if we—”

He doesn’t finish that thought because Dean hurls a water bottle at his head.

“Get out,” he chokes. The back of his throat stings with bile. “Sam, get the fuck out.”

“Sam,” Cas says, dropping Dean’s hand. “He’s chosen.” He stands so he’s facing Sam and Dean’s never been more grateful that Cas is broad enough that Dean doesn’t have to see whatever is on Sam’s face as he walks backwards towards the door.

“Cas,” Sam pleads. Cas shakes his head and gestures to the hallway, but Sam must say something that Dean can’t hear because Cas hesitates and looks back over his shoulder.

“I’m going outside,” he says, “but only for a few minutes.” He hesitates again. “Call me if you get cold.”

 _I’m already cold,_ Dean thinks, but Cas has already followed Sam into the hall and the door shuts partially behind him. Dean can hear them talking quietly and for once he’s not at all interested in knowing whether they’re talking about him.

His heart is racing and he tries to pull the blanket up around his shoulder without jostling the catheter in his other hand.

 _Claimed,_ he thinks.

_Face down on the concrete with a paw between his…_

_Don’t think about it._

He pulls the blanket higher and it covers his shoulder but now his toes are exposed. Distracted, he looks down the length of the bed and notices the socks he’s wearing. They’re thick and grey with yellow squiggles on them, and he has absolutely no memory of putting them on. He supposes that Cas or Sam slipped them on when he was asleep, but more than that he doesn’t even remember _owning_ them which means someone went out and bought socks so his feet wouldn’t get cold, and he knows without a doubt that it was Cas who saw these stupid grey-and-yellow socks and bought them for Dean.

Socks or not, his toes are getting colder by the second and he wiggles them. Now that he’s paying attention he realises that the yellow squiggles are actually bananas. He pictures Cas in a nameless shop, somewhere, holding up the banana socks and smiling to himself.

“Oh,” he says quietly. The bananas wiggle. He breathes out slowly. “I love him.” _Holy shit._ He curls his knees to get his toes beneath the blanket, but it’s really not that much warmer than outside the blanket so he pops them back out just so he can look at the bananas again.

_I’m going to have sex with Cas._

His teeth start chattering.

There’s a part of him that wants nothing more than for Cas to crawl into bed with him and make it stop hurting, even for a little while. But the rational part knows that no matter how in love he is this is going to suck. He’s doped up, fed up, and so weak he’s not even going to be able to enjoy any of it. And he’s not foolish enough to think it’s going to be that close to enjoyable anyway. Not when he’s still healing from the hellhound’s wounds.

But, if he can do it, it’ll be over.

No more venom, no more hallucinations.

And Cas waiting for him on the other side.

He sighs and sinks back into the sheets.

And almost like it could hear the hope in his thoughts, he smells it.

_Sulphur._

Too late, he tries to call for Cas but he’s lost all the air in his lungs. The door swings further shut and there’s something behind it, waiting. The room turns icy cold in an instant and Dean’s neck cords with a scream that gets stuck beneath the squeeze of his throat.

 _“Cas,”_ he wheezes instead, but if the hellhound hears him it doesn’t back down. It lifts its immense head and its claws _tap-tap-tap_ across the bunker’s floor as it pads to his bed. Dean tries to throw himself backwards but his head is the only part of him that moves, arching with a muffled _thump_ against the pillow. He struggles to draw the rest of his body away but his limbs are suddenly loose and pliant. The hound snuffles at the foot of his bed and his legs fall open automatically. The blanket slips off him and he’s so _cold._ _No,_ he thinks desperately, but the hound just shoves at one of his knees to get it further out of the way. Its nose is wet and the kind of cold that clings and spreads. Something _moves_ beneath his skin and it’s mirrored in the hound’s dark insides, like it’s infected him with crawling beetles.

Dean keens way back in his throat and the hound hauls itself up onto the bed until all Dean can see is the dark coiling mass of it and the two burning eyes glowing a scant inch above his own. They’re hot but they’re so, so cold. They’re leaching the rest of the warmth out of the room. Even as he claws weakly at the bed sheets beneath his hands the rest of his body is open and willing as though whatever’s in him is answering whatever’s in the hound.

“Don’t,” he whimpers, and his hands curl into fists at his side but he can’t even lift his arms to use them. “Don’t, please, Cas, Sam, please, don’t let it.” His voice is so quiet he can’t even hear it, and anyway Cas isn’t there, Cas can’t help him. He’s in Heaven. Or worse, he’s back in Hell. The hound’s teeth glisten over his chest, his clavicle. They lower to touch the bandages that cover the bites it’s already put there, and Dean’s weeping before it even reaches his face, its tongue flicking out to taste and leaving freezing fire in its wake. His thighs spread wider and one of his knees lifts to give the hound more room.

 _Cas you_ promised _you’d never let it find me._

The hound lowers itself over his legs and Dean has a bare second to think _No, don’t, not again,_ before warmth hits him like a freight train, right over his heart. For an awful moment he thinks it’s happened, it’s got him, but then the hellhound slinks backwards and evaporates into the air and it’s not a hound on him after all, it’s Cas, _thank God,_ it’s _Cas._ Dean’s arms flop uselessly before he reaches up and grabs for Cas’s shoulder, and the collar of his shirt. He squeezes his legs back together.

“It was here,” he tries to tell him. “Cas, it was _here,_ it was right on top of me.”

Cas has Dean’s shirt rucked up and his palm is laid square in the centre of Dean’s chest. His eyebrows are pulled down and he’s saying something that Dean can’t hear. He wants Cas to promise that it won’t happen again, that he won’t leave, that there are no more hellhounds left.

“Dean,” he says instead, muffled and distant. And then again, “Dean. Dean, can you hear me? It’s not real. There’s nothing there.”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, then wrenches them open. “You have to do it,” he realises. “Cas, you have to fuck me _now.”_

 

 

 

 


	12. Cas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s in me, Cas, it’s _in me,_ can see it, can fucking _feel it._ Cas—” he claws at Castiel’s throat, “—you gotta get it out, Cas, _please."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys I just sent the final chapter to [Silver](https://silver9mm.tumblr.com) for edits so uhhhhhhh???? _We're almost done???_ Woah. Silver has been betaing like crazy even during Thanksgiving so once again a huge thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> Anyway enjoy the update! For everyone looking forward to sweet loving smutty destiel without a single ounce of angst i present to you... not that!

Dean’s attempt at dragging him into bed is pitiful but Castiel only resists for a half second before the look on Dean’s face makes him fold.

“Okay,” he soothes as Dean’s fingers clench ineffectually in his shirt. “I’m here.” He brings his elbows and one of his knees up so he can half-lay-half-kneel on the mattress, one hand still pressed to Dean’s chest. He gingerly shifts the IV line out of the way and then decides against it and removes the catheter entirely. It was hardly helping anyway.

“Cas, _now,”_ Dean says again. His hands move restlessly and Castiel guesses that he’s trying to undo the buttons on his shirt, but he’s too clumsy to get far.

“You should rest first,” he says reasonably even though he knows Dean will protest. “The hallucinations are tiring.”

“I’m not tired!”

“You’re always tired.”

Dean’s jaw clenches and releases but he doesn’t look up from where he’s clawed his fingers into the gap between Castiel’s buttons. “There’s one way to fix that,” he says fiercely, yanking unsuccessfully.

“Dean, settle down. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You gotta fix me, Cas. You gotta make me human again.”

He sucks in a sharp breath. “You _are_ human.”

“No, that’s not… Stuff’s crawlin’ under my skin, Cas. Sometimes I can _see_ it.” He tugs his fingers out from Cas’s shirt and stares at his forearm. There are bruises and needle punctures and Band-Aids littered across him but Castiel gets the impression that he’s not looking at the skin. “Alastair always threatened me,” he whispers. “Used to tell me he’d do it.”

“Do what?” He shifts carefully until he’s on his side and then draws the blanket over them both. Dean is ice cold against him.

“Make me theirs. Just for a few years. Heard rumours about it. About souls missing. New hounds.” He’s not making any sense but he suddenly stares up at Castiel and grabs for his shirt again. “It was trying to make new hounds, Cas.” His eyes flick from one side to the other, feverish. “What if it, Cas, what if I—”

Castiel slides his hand from Dean’s chest to his side and draws him in close. “Dean, stop, you’re—”

“It’s in me, Cas, it’s _in me,_ can see it, can fucking _feel it._ Cas—” he claws at Castiel’s throat, “—you gotta get it out, Cas, _please._ When it comes I don’t… I’m not _me_ anymore!”

Castiel tucks his chin into Dean’s shoulder and hushes him, rocking gently. “There’s nothing in you,” he soothes. “Dean, it’s all in your—”

“It’s not in my head!” Dean shoves him with surprising strength and then grabs for him again to haul him back in close until they’re nose to nose. Castiel tells himself that he’s imagining the smell of sulphur on Dean’s breath. “Alastair said he’d do it,” Dean hisses. “Said he’d give me to the hounds. Let them _breed_ me.”

“That’s not… Dean, that’s not possible.” Castiel covers Dean’s cold hands with his own. “That’s not why hellhounds mate,” he promises. “Hounds aren’t born, there’s no way you could be—”

“Don’t pretend to understand.” Dean’s wild-eyed, drawing Castiel closer even though they’re already as close as they can get. His lips pull back until his teeth are bared in a snarl that takes all the blood from Castiel’s face. “I know the rules, Cas. You raised me from Hell but I _lived_ it. Hounds aren’t born, they’re _created.”_

“That’s not—”

“What if it turned me? Cas, what if I wake up tomorrow with coals for eyes?”

“There’s no way,” Castiel breathes, appalled. His hands have gone limp over Dean’s, but Dean’s holding on enough for the both of them, so close that his teeth are almost against Castiel’s cheek. “Dean, there’s _no way._ It’s not possible.”

 _“Don’t tell me it’s not possible,”_ Dean cries, fingers like claws in Castiel’s collar. _“Don’t tell me it’ll be okay!_ Cas, what’s _happening_ to me?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel whispers, wishing he did. “I don’t know, Dean, I don’t know but I swear, I _swear_ we won’t let that happen.” He puts his hands on Dean’s cheeks; pushes him back just far enough to look at him properly. “You’re safe here,” he promises. He’s tucked as close to Dean’s body as he can get. The skin around Dean’s eyes is pale and it makes the green fever-bright. He’s cold and shaking and _terrified_ and Castiel will see Heaven _burn_ for this. He’s raised Dean from Hell and followed him through Purgatory and pulled him from Heaven and there’s nowhere that Dean could go that he wouldn’t follow. “You’re safe here,” he says again, and kisses him.

Dean’s lips don’t feel like much at the first press. Freezing. And a little dry, maybe, but Castiel vividly remembers the coppery wetness of them in the backseat of the stolen car and he infinitely prefers this. He waits for Dean to open his mouth before he copies and there _is_ sulphur there. His stomach plummets. Dean makes a shocked, choking noise and his hands go from clawing to clinging in a heartbeat. “Cas,” he begs into Castiel’s mouth, high pitched. “Cas, get it out of me.” His lips are cold but his tongue is warm and without thinking Castiel licks the taste of sulphur from his mouth until it’s just Dean left. He is inexperienced at kissing but he’s experienced at loving Dean—he’s spent a decade doing it. Dean is open-mouthed against him and cold everywhere except where Castiel touches; his hands, his chest, his lips. Castiel might not know how to kiss but he knows he needs to get his skin on Dean’s, so he finishes what Dean started, unbuttoning his shirt without taking his lips away. He pulls his arms free and tosses the shirt to the side and Dean doesn’t even notice until Castiel has to lean back to rip his t-shirt off too.

“I’m here,” he urges as he slips back into Dean’s searching arms. “Come on, I’m here.” He tries to pull Dean’s t-shirt off as well but this time Dean won’t let him go and the shirt ends up hanging in a ring around Dean’s neck while they kiss.

“Don’t leave,” Castiel thinks he hears. Dean’s heart thunders against his chest. Now that they’re touching elsewhere his hands are free to find Dean’s cheeks, his jaw. His fingers map a path up to Dean’s temples and he follows with his lips, leaving Dean’s mouth free so he can gasp and say his name, “Cas,” again, “Cas,” like every touch is the first one.

Castiel smooths his hands through Dean’s hair and his lips find Dean’s again. Dean flinches as Castiel’s tongue flicks over the roof of his mouth, so Castiel pulls back and lets Dean set the pace. Dean pants and clings like he’s scared Castiel will leave, but he relaxes as Castiel continues to card through his hair.

“That’s it,” Castiel encourages. “I’m not going anywhere. Easy, easy.”

Eventually, the hammer of Dean’s heart slows and he presses them more firmly together. Dean’s fingers unclench and his hand curves around to settle behind Castiel’s shoulders. The kiss goes soft. Castiel stops worrying about the technique and lets himself enjoy the way he can feel Dean’s breath on his cheek. The sound of their mouths meeting is close, a little wet. Dean is warmer now than he’s been in weeks. His hair is soft between Castiel’s fingers. At some point their legs met beneath the covers and Castiel’s knee is between Dean’s.

“There’s no rush,” he says softly when Dean finally leans away. “We can take this slow.” He helps Dean take the shirt the rest of the way off.

“I don’t want to wait,” Dean whispers back, and his thumb slides behind Castiel’s shoulder blades and down the centre of his back. He hesitates, then, “Where’s Sam?”

“He went for a drive.”

“Smart kid.” Dean appears to reconsider for a moment. “Well, sometimes smart kid. Sometimes idiot kid.”

“He was just trying to help.” Castiel shifts and becomes aware of the way his thigh is pressed between Dean’s. He is also aware, theoretically, that human males should be erect during sexual encounters, though he doesn’t think Dean is.

There’s silence for a beat too long and he knows that Dean can see his thoughts on his face. Dean rolls his head away. “I’ll be honest with you,” he says hoarsely. “I don’t think I’m going to be much of a lay.” His hand comes to rest at the small of Castiel’s back and Castiel kisses him again, slowly.

“I would that our first time were in any other circumstances,” he says the next time they part. Dean rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be sappy about it, jeez.”

“How would you like me to be about it?”

Dean hesitates. “Slow?” He hesitates again. “And, uh. Don’t hold me down.”

“Of course.”

“And…” Dean blinks down and Castiel has to touch his chin to make him look back. “Just… just tell me that this isn’t, that we won’t… that this won’t _change_ anything.”

“Dean…”

“No, I mean.” He puts his forehead on Castiel’s and closes his eyes. “Promise me,” he whispers. “Promise me that you’ll still want me.”

There’s nothing in all of creation that could stop him from wanting Dean. He imagines that his love is so all-encompassing that even death itself could not break it. “I promise,” he whispers back, his lips moving so close to Dean’s that it’s a promise almost sealed with a kiss.

Dean smiles almost ruefully and pushes Castiel’s hand down. “Go on, then.”

Castiel reaches down between them and thumbs his pants open. He has to sit up to shuffle them off and Dean has already gone cold by the time he slips back against him. As though the venom is playing catch-up. Dean shrinks back slightly and Castiel doesn’t let himself take it personally. He waits for Dean to relax again before he kisses him gently.

In the movies, the couples stare at each other with wide eyes and adoration, but Castiel has been staring at Dean like that for years already. He expands his lungs, just so he can breathe in Dean’s nearness. “May I?” he whispers, moving his hand down to rest against Dean’s hip.

“I guess you’d better.”

He slips his fingers into Dean’s track pants and eases them down. Dean kicks them off the rest of the way without looking at him. Castiel is careful not to let his legs touch anything but Dean’s legs when he settles back into place beside him. He’s comfortable in his own body—has no reason not to be—but he’s aware of Dean’s disquiet. He leaves his hand on Dean’s hip and this time he waits for Dean to kiss him before leaning in. Dean is hesitant so Castiel lets him set the pace until he licks across his bottom lip. Without thinking about it Castiel closes his lips over the tip of Dean’s tongue and instinctively mouths at it. Dean’s breath hitches so Castiel sucks gently, and he’s rewarded when the next breath is more of a whimper than anything else.

Something akin to heat clamps around his midriff and he has to let go of Dean’s tongue to take a gasp of air that he isn’t even supposed to need.

“Yeah?” Dean asks. Castiel takes a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Yes,” he replies. Then, “Sorry,” when Dean moves and his thigh bumps Castiel’s erection.

“Apologising for getting a boner?” Dean pokes him in the ribs. “We’re naked in bed together. I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

Castiel shifts awkwardly. “You’re, uh. You’re not…?”

“Listen.” Dean smiles ruefully. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen tonight. No, don’t _go._ I just meant… I think it might be a bit of a one-sided performance, is all.” One of his arms is still around Castiel’s back and they’re lying beneath the cover face-to-face. Castiel waits for Dean to break the silence. “I just want this to be over,” he eventually says. “But I don’t think I’m gonna be having a blast and I don’t want… I don’t want you to think it’s because of you.”

“You want to have unenjoyable sex?”

Dean pokes him again. “Just coz I’m not hard doesn’t mean I don’t want this.”

“But you _do_ want this?”

“I want _you._ And I want you without this venom, and the hallucinations, and the cold. I want you in my bed when I’m healthy, dammit. But can we just… can we just get through this until then?”

Castiel rubs his nose on Dean’s, and then does it again because even Dean’s nose is cold. “I’d like to try and make it enjoyable, if that’s okay with you. You’ll tell me if you want to stop?”

Dean nods warily and Castiel shifts, waiting for Dean’s legs to open before he slips his knee between them. He hitches his leg up until it can’t go any further, and then brings his hips forward. “Okay?” he checks. This time Dean’s nod is a little bit shaky. Castiel draws him closer with the hand on his hip until the top of his thigh is against Dean’s crotch. He presses forward again and rocks gently, searching for an angle or a spot that will…

Dean’s breath snags slightly, and his legs squeeze. “I thought you hadn’t done this before?”

“I haven’t,” Castiel admits. “Though I’ve been watching humanity for millennia. Is it good?” Dean hums and Castiel sinks his hips forward, just the same as before. Dean’s breath huffs out of him. Again. And again. His thighs go tight around Castiel’s leg before suddenly shuddering away.

“Stop, stop,” he gasps. He lurches and Castiel moves without letting go. He transfers his hand from Dean’s hip back to his chest.

“Too much?” he guesses.

“No, no, it was fine, it just… it hurts a bit.”

“Maybe I wasn’t doing it right.”

“Ha. No. You were doing it right. I just, I dunno, it was good and then it started hurting instead.”

Castiel hums. “Does that usually happen?”

“What? _No.”_

“You’re still healing from your wounds.”

“No, it wasn’t _that_ kind of hurt. It was… it was like the good just suddenly went bad.” He shifts restlessly.

“Maybe we should wait until we’ve done more research,” Castiel says, but Dean is already creeping back into his space as though he can’t stand to be away from the warmth for even a second.

“We already knew the venom might fight back, right?” His fingers sneak up to Castiel’s shoulder and press to his skin like little icicles. “Maybe it’s just going to hurt whenever you make it feel good.” He laughs bitterly and bites out, “At least that won’t be a problem when you fuck me.”

“Intercourse is supposed to be enjoyable when done properly.” He knows he’s stumbling over the common terms for things but Dean doesn’t correct him, only eyes him sharply before looking away.

“You’d better not do it properly then,” he says. There’s some kind of emotion in his voice that Castiel can’t identify.

“Dean.” Dean doesn’t turn to look at him so Castiel talks to the side of his face. “When this is done we can try anything else you want, or nothing at all. I promise I can make this good for you.”

“I don’t want it _good,_ Cas. I want it _over.”_

Castiel can’t shake the feeling that no matter what he does the next hour will only be adding to Dean’s mental trauma. But is it worth the cost, if it allows Dean to heal?

“We can wait until we’ve done more research,” he offers again.

Dean hesitates but shakes his head. “I’m getting colder,” he offers by way of explanation. “I think the, I don’t know, the venom or whatever, I think it knows what we’re doing. I’m cold everywhere you’re not touching me. Colder than usual. And when you move away I can smell sulphur.”

Castiel rubs Dean’s arms, trying to chafe some warmth into them. But he knows it’s not friction Dean’s body needs. The venom is forcing him to seek touch and simultaneously stopping him from enjoying it.

“I can stay here and just… hold you, if you need to sleep?”

Dean barks out a laugh and shakes his head. Castiel thinks he’s about to say something but instead, he squares his shoulders and grabs for Castiel’s wrist, pulling it down and around his waist. He lets go only when Castiel’s hand is on his ass. He takes a breath like he’s steeling himself for battle and then brings his knee up over Castiel’s thighs. “I, uh. Haven’t done this kind of… I mean, this sort of thing before either. But. I think it’ll be easier if you—“ he coughs, “—prepare. Me.”

The position has brought their hips together and Castiel smothers the urge to apologise again. He had softened somewhat when they stopped kissing but he can’t deny that his body likes being against Dean’s. The difference in their enjoyment is stark when he can feel how soft Dean is against his own growing erection.

He has a very clear image of how he wants this to go.

He will kiss Dean for hours. Days. He will take Dean to a beautiful place and tell him the truths he would never otherwise believe. How important he is. How good, and kind. He will map the axis of his spine, and his limbs, and the points of each finger like an astronomer discovering the constellations. Dean will shed his clothes slowly, and then remove Castiel’s. They will stand together a long time in the beautiful place. He will cradle Dean’s head like he has never before been allowed to and he will touch him and touch him and touch him. He will unearth Dean’s hedonism in pieces until there will never be a time that Dean’s skin doesn’t recognise his own. At the moment of their coupling, he will tell Dean he loves him. And then again every day for the rest of their lives. He will only let Dean know pleasure by his hand.

Instead, he takes the little bottle that Sam had slipped into his pocket, and he coats his fingers with the gel inside. He presses his lips to the corner of Dean’s mouth and tries not to shiver at the ice of Dean’s skin. His misjudges the curve of Dean’s body and gets some of the gel on Dean’s thigh before edging his fingers around. Dean presses his forehead to Castiel’s but doesn’t flinch as Castiel’s fingers ease between his cheeks.

He wants to make it slow, he wants to make it good. He wants a lot of things but most of all he wants Dean to no longer be owned by the drug of the venom in his veins. “You’ll tell me if—”

“Yeah, yeah, of course, just…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. The gel has barely warmed at all but Dean gives no sign he notices the chill except to close his eyes and hold his breath. A muscle in his thigh jumps and goes still as Castiel rubs the tip of his finger down the cleft of Dean’s ass. He wants to crawl down the bed so he can see what he’s doing, but he doesn’t know how to do that without losing skin contact everywhere else. He relies on the sensitivity of his finger pad instead. The place he’s searching for barely feels like a dip, and even when he rubs it he can’t possibly fathom slipping even a finger inside, let alone his cock. He knows this part of Dean has opened to accommodate something much larger but he can’t comprehend the idea that he’s going to be able to do it pain-free.

He continues rubbing.

“Okay?” he ventures.

Dean nods shakily and hitches his leg further up Castiel’s side. After a moment he clears his throat and, without opening his eyes, he says, “You have to get the lube inside me.”

Castiel knows, theoretically, that this is required. But Dean seems impossibly tight against his fingertip. He presses a little firmer and rubs harder. He makes careful little circles and then makes the circles tighter and tighter, pressing ever-firmer until he’s sure there has to be some give.

Dean grunts and flexes and the tip of Castiel’s finger seems to press _in,_ somehow, but in his surprise,  he stops pushing forward and the fingertip immediately pops back out. Dean lets out a tremendous heave of air like even that tiny penetration cost him something, and Castiel _cannot_ see how they’re supposed to do this.

“Again,” Dean mumbles.

Castiel gets another glob of the gel and starts to repeat the tight little circles. Dean’s eyebrows furrow in without him seeming to realise and his expression stays just like that as Castiel spears the fingertip into him again. This time he maintains the pressure so he doesn’t slip back out and he watches Dean’s face carefully for further signs of discomfort.

“Stop staring,” Dean mutters.

“You can’t even see me.”

“I can _feel_ you staring. Just keep going. I’m fine.”

Castiel does. He makes the same little circles as best as he can, but Dean is stubbornly tight. He grunts when Castiel tries to get further in, so Castiel retreats until it’s just the tip again. He circles and twitches as gently as he can but after long minutes there’s no change in the strength of the grip around his finger.

“Something’s wrong,” Dean eventually says. Castiel pulls out immediately and Dean shivers. “It’s supposed to get easier but it’s… I can’t relax.”

“It’s not your fault,” Castiel replies automatically.

“I fucking hope not. I thought this shit was supposed to feel good.” He readjusts the pillow beneath his head and settles a little closer. “Try again,” he demands. “And kiss me?”

Castiel complies. It’s just as difficult to get his fingertip past the ring of muscle as it was the first time but he swallows the soft sound of Dean’s discomfort and then keeps kissing him as he presses in. Dean stops kissing back when Castiel reaches the second knuckle, and Castiel takes it as his cue to pause there. At least Dean’s not cold here, even though he’s not loosening up at all.

“Dean,” he whispers, and it’s not really a question but Dean shakes his head anyway.

Castiel hooks his finger like he’s beckoning. He is intimately aware of the structural composition of Dean’s body and he knows that there is a place here, somewhere, that might help. He’s at a terrible angle but he keeps kneading Dean’s inner walls until Dean’s breath catches. Castiel kisses him and rubs the spot again.

Dean relaxes marginally around him and Castiel gets half a second to think, _Thank God, it’s working,_ before Dean goes whole-body stiff as he bites out a scream.

“Dean!”

“Mother _fucker!”_

Horrified, he goes to pull out and finds that the constriction around his finger is so extreme he’s worried that exiting will cause more damage than staying.

“Dean,” he pleads, “Dean, what happened? What did I do?”

Dean’s grunting in quick _ah, ah, ah_ ’s that are only an octave away from screams themselves.

“Dean? Dean, please! What’s going on?”

“Hurts,” Dean grits out.

“Where? How?”

Dean hisses between clenched teeth and though his grip is weak Castiel can tell he’s holding onto him as fiercely as he’s able.

“Is it the same pain as before?”

Dean nods against his cheek. With his free hand, Castiel awkwardly pats his back and side until the almost-screams stop. He waits a few more minutes for Dean’s heart rate to slow. “Perhaps,” he ventures, “perhaps this is the venom fighting back.”

Dean makes a sound suspiciously close to a sob. “Fuck this,” he says wetly, emphatically. “So I can’t have sex until I relax and I can’t relax unless you make it feel good.” He digs his knuckles into Castiel’s spine. “And I can’t let it _feel good_ without it _hurting_ and I can’t stop it hurting until I have sex!”

There’s nothing Castiel can say to that except an agreement, and he doesn’t want to do that either.

“I’ll make it as gentle as possible,” he says instead.

“I know you will,” Dean replies. But he won’t look at him when Castiel starts to move his finger again.

 

 

 

 


	13. Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s bad enough that you can’t—that I can’t make it feel good. I’m not going to let it _hurt!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're almost through my friends :) but i couldn't finish this off without one last thunderwhump
> 
> thank you as always to [Silver](http://silver9mm.tumblr.com/) who is an A+++ beta and found a spider way back in chapter 1 while researching my incomprehensible use of grammar in chapter 13. World class.

It hurts, it hurts, it fucking _hurts._ Cas managed to squeeze a second finger in alongside the first but Dean’s pretty sure he only did it through dogged determination since Dean doesn’t appear to be relaxing _at all._ And now the pain is edging dangerously close to _familiar_ territory and he has to keep reminding himself that it’s _Cas._ This is _Cas._

He’s occupying himself by forcing the muscles of his face to remain neutral. He seems to have some control over _them,_ at least. Every time he lets a grimace through Cas stops and asks _Are you alright,_ like the answer to that could _possibly_ be _Oh, yeah, no fucking problems here, pal_. They’ve been going at this for twenty minutes and it’s not getting better; it’s getting so much worse. He’s so _cold_ and it doesn’t seem to matter that Cas is touching him because the venom is just getting stronger or something, and the only reason his teeth aren’t chattering is because he’s clenched them together. Cas keeps giving him soft little kisses that Dean can’t reciprocate, and he’s being _so_ patient but it’s becoming more and more obvious that this isn’t going to happen like it’s supposed to.

 “Cas—” he tries again.

“No,” Cas tells him for the gazillionth time. “Not until you’re adequately prepared.”

“It’s not gonna happen, man.”

Cas doesn’t reply. Just keeps easing the two fingers out _(acid and blood dripping out behind it as his knees hit the floor)_ and then forcing them back in _(thick wedge of muscle demanding entrance to lock them together)_. He breathes through it and wills it to work this time, this time for sure. Cas is going to do it _just_ right and everything will go soft and pliant and easy and they’ll laugh and it’ll be over.

Cas _does_ do it just right, but Dean doesn’t go soft and pliant. Cas’s fingertips squeeze past something that makes Dean gasp and his toes curl on instinct. But like thunder following lightning, the tingles go from _oh-that’s-good_ to _fuck-shit-holyshit_ in a heartbeat and it’s _so_ much worse than the last time. It’s getting stronger. His lungs drop out through his stomach and for one horrific moment the sticky-sulphur weight of the hound slams into place over him, its jaws opening up around his neck. He can feel its teeth wedging into place in the still-unhealed bites and it sends bolts of agony down his spine to meet the pain where Cas’s fingers are still lodged inside him.

But it’s over as soon as it’s arrived. Cas peppers his face with kisses and talks to him until he comes back to himself.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

“Cas,” he groans.

“I’m sorry, are you okay? I was just trying to—”

Dean unclamps his leg from around Cas’s waist and as he moves he’s treated to the pudge of Cas’s softening erection against his thigh. Cas grimaces and shifts with embarrassment and Dean is instantly aware that Cas is still inside him. “Cas,” he groans again. Cas looks sheepish and tries to withdraw but it’s like sandpaper on his insides and Dean automatically clamps back down, shaking his head. “Wait, wait, wait, slower, _God,_ this is the _worst_ lube.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Dean grunts. “Not your fault,” he manages. “But, uh. Try to avoid that spot, yeah?”

Cas leans forward to kiss him and he somehow manages not to flinch. At least Cas is still warm even though Dean must be leeching so much heat straight out of him.

They kiss for a solid minute as Cas carefully slides free. It’s a relief to be empty again. Dean already knows that there’s no difference at all in how stretched he is. And that’s not going to change any time soon.

“Cas, I think you need to just do it.”

Cas is just as adamant as he was at the beginning. “No! I won’t do that to you!” His eyebrows furrow as he squeezes out another dollop of lube. “It’s bad enough that you can’t—that I can’t make it feel good. I’m not going to let it _hurt!”_

“I’m not seeing any other options,” Dean says gently.

“I just have to go slower,” Cas says with the same determined expression he usually saves for fighting bad guys.

“Cas, come on.”

“There’s a way to do it. I know there is.”

“Cas, there’s no way. It’s gonna hurt no matter what you do.”

 _“It won’t!”_ he says fiercely. “I won’t let it! I won’t hurt you!”

“You’re _already_ hurting me. Please, Cas. You’ve gotta make it better.”

Cas opens his mouth like he’s going to argue some more and Dean leans forward to touch their foreheads together. Cas stills and whatever he was going to say turns into a frustrated sigh, then, “This is not how this was supposed to go.” His arm comes around Dean’s side and Dean would complain about the smear of lube on his hip but he’s getting colder by the second and Cas’s arms feel good around him. He snuggles closer.

“How was it supposed to go?”

“I would have _made love_ to you. Not… not _this.”_

He hums. “Yeah? Maybe next time.”

“Will there be a next time?”

Dean almost blows the question off but changes his answer at the last moment. “Maybe,” he concedes. “I hope so.”

“That’s fair.”

Cas starts running his fingertips up and down Dean’s spine until Dean closes his eyes. They lie there for a moment; possibly avoiding what has to come next.

“That feels good,” Dean murmurs.

“You feel good,” Cas replies. Dean smiles and snuggles closer. God, it’s cold.

“Sap.”

“For you? Always.”

Dean blinks at him and he’s about to say something cheesy but as he opens his eyes a shadow in the corner of the room flickers. He freezes and whips around to look at it, but the only thing there is Sam’s empty chair and a book open on the nightstand.

“Dean?”

“Did you see that?”

“What?” Cas blinks over his shoulder. “See what?”

There’s another shadow in the opposite corner but as soon as Dean turns to look at it, it’s gone. “There! Did you see it?”

“There’s nothing there.” Cas wraps his arms tighter around Dean. “Dean, are you… Are the hallucinations back?”

Dean tries to turn around to see what’s behind him. “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?”

“Dean be still!”

_“Where is it?”_

“Stop struggling! It’ll go away if you let me hold you!”

“You _are_ holding me!” He manages to free himself enough to turn around but Cas just clamps back around him so Dean’s tucked against his chest, back to front. “Cas, it’s coming!”

“It’s not! There’s nothing there!” Cas spreads his fingers on Dean’s stomach. “I think it’s just the venom getting stronger. Do I still feel warm?”

Dean wriggles in Cas’s grip, trying to focus. The shadows in his peripheries are teasing him, never _quite_ in the room. “Yes,” he gasps. “You’re warm.” _But it’s not enough._ The bedside light flickers and he flinches back into Cas’s arms. “Cas!”

“Close your eyes.”

“What!”

“There’s nothing there, I promise. Close your eyes!”

Dean squeezes them shut and shakes his head. This doesn’t feel like the normal hallucinations. Usually, the shadows come all at once, and the hellhound appears from amongst them. But this time it’s like it’s straining to get to him. Like Cas’s presence is only just keeping it at bay.

“I think we’re out of time,” he gasps. “It’s fighting you.”

“It’s fighting _you._ It’s fighting to keep you.”

“Don’t let it,” he begs. With his eyes closed he can feel every point of contact between them. Cas’s arms wrapped around him and his thigh thrown over Dean’s. The heat of his crotch against Dean’s ass. And he can feel when Cas drops his head so his forehead is at the back of Dean’s neck.

“No, God,” Cas whispers. “Not like this.”

Dean’s heart breaks. Because this isn’t just happening to _him,_ it’s hurting Cas, too. “Cas,” he whimpers. He turns to try and see him but as soon as he opens his eyes there are two gleaming orange coals a foot from the bed and he screams instead.

Cas grabs him as he flails away and forcefully turns him into the mattress. “Don’t look!” he orders. “Dean, don’t look! It’s not real!” The movement puts Cas over Dean’s body and he’s suddenly back there, on the concrete floor, and the weight between his legs is evil and intent.

“Don’t!” he screams. “Cas, don’t let it!”

He writhes, but he’s lost too much strength and the hound holds him down easily, snuffling at his ears and the back of his neck.

“It’s me,” the hound is saying. “It’s me, it’s me, stop struggling, Dean, _please.”_

“Cas, _help.”_

There’s a swift kiss at his nape and Dean buries his face in the pillow, clutching at the sheets with both hands. It’s Cas, it’s the hound, it’s _Cas._ It doesn’t feel like Cas when slippery fingers prise his cheeks apart and something warm slots between them.

Cas grunts above him, and even half out of his mind with panic Dean can tell that he’s nowhere near hard enough to be able to press inside. It’s both a relief and a threat. A relief because he knows this is going to suck, but a threat because if they wait much longer the hound will come for real.

“Dean.”

There’s a wet sound of flesh-on-flesh and Dean can’t help the shiver that wracks up his body. His knees are spread wide and Cas is between them, jerking himself off as best as he can. The blanket is still over them and Cas is touching him but the cold is bordering on freezing and they’re _out of time._ His fists curl in the sheets.

“Cas,” he whispers. “Come on, Cas. You have to get this thing out of me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

_Don’t be sorry, just do it._

“It’s okay, I’m okay, come on.”

One of Cas’s arms is locked tight around his chest— _holding him down, pressing him_ down—and the other sporadically bumps the inside of Dean’s thigh. But it’s _Cas,_ it’s just _Cas._

“Dean, I’m so sorry.”

Dean shakes his head and clenches his fists harder in the pillow. He spreads his legs— _can’t close them coz there’s a paw between his knees—_ and that makes the hound— _Cas,_ just Cas _—_ harden up where he’s slotted against him. For all the time they spent prepping, he doesn’t in the least bit feel prepped. Especially when the hound—Cas, it’s _Cas,_ it’s _Cas—_ shifts him closer with the arm around his chest and something _presses_.

Alastair cups his jaw when he screams; laughing because he’s finally done it, after all these years. He’s given Dean to the hounds like he always said he would.

“No,” he moans. “I got out, you’re not real, I got out.”

 _You never left,_ Alastair hisses in that cruel, dry voice.

The hound is fighting him even though he’s not putting up any resistance. It’s clamped tight around his chest and though its teeth aren’t buried in him yet he knows it’s not far off. His body flexes pitifully but he doesn’t push the thing off him. He _can’t._ The hound’s arm unwraps from his chest and moves to his hip and _squeezes._

“Dean,” the hound whimpers, “forgive me.”

 _Forgive_ me, Dean thinks stupidly. The hound kisses the spot between his shoulder blades and it’s so warm, not like Hell, not even like Heaven. It’s warm like Cas.

He unclenches one hand from the bedsheets to scrabble blindly for the fingers at his hip. He squeezes them together with whatever strength he has left—not much, he assumes—and holds his breath as the pressure gets worse and worse and somehow, impossibly, _worse._

“Cas,” he whispers, caught on a precipice between _here_ and _there._ If Cas says anything in return Dean doesn’t hear him.

The pressure builds and it can’t be comfortable for either of them but to Dean, it feels like he’s living through incremental blunt force trauma. He wonders briefly if it’s possible to bruise that part of the body but he also knows that what’s happening is going to result in something much worse than bruising.

 _You were made for this,_ Alastair whispers into his ear.

There are too many Deans. He’s in bed with Cas. He’s also far away. The hellhound is trying to split him in two. He’s surrounded simultaneously by Hellfire and by Heaven’s stagnant glow and by the light of the bunker’s flickering bulbs. He thinks there’s another Dean who could maybe slip sideways into the place where he’s working on the guns with Sam. Drinking a beer with Cas. He doesn’t want to be the Dean that’s _here._

Whatever’s above him—Cas, a hound, all the king’s horses, Dean doesn’t know anymore—grunts with effort and digs a finger into him, struggling to create room ahead of its dick. Dean tries to muffle his shout in the pillow. It kisses his back again. Wet like it’s crying.

“Stay with me,” it begs. The fingers on Dean’s hip squeeze. “I’m trying, Dean, I’m trying.”

_The knife is right here, Deano._

He turns around and Cas is holding a beer out for him. He’s gesturing to the car like he wants Dean to come and take a look and Dean could… He could go there if he wanted. He’s not needed anywhere else. There’s only so much pressure his body can take and he feels like he’s approaching that endpoint.

“It won’t work,” he mumbles into the pillow. The venom won’t let him get fucked by anything other than a hound. Unless… unless he can…

God, he doesn’t want to. He’s lived through enough pain. When will it be enough? He _doesn’t want to._ But there’s a part of him still lucid, still _present._ And that part won’t let him die in peace.

Treacherously, traitorously, he twists his fingers out of the grip holding them to his waist.

“Dean…”

Cas is here, or maybe the hound never left.

He inches his freed hand between himself and the mattress. He’s so numb from cold it’s like trying to manoeuvre driftwood.

_You belong down here, Deano._

“Reckon we should change the oil?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his forehead into the pillow. It’s not real. It’s not real. His hand creeps down.

(Dean, I’m sorry, I’m trying.)

“Incest is forbidden in Heaven.”

It’s not _real._

“It knows human scum when it smells it.”

He finds his dick through muscle memory alone. There’s no feeling left in his fingers.

(Dean, it’s not working)

(Just a little bit longer, just a little bit…)

The stink of sulphur washes his back and sides. He bites the pillow to stop it getting in his mouth but the pillow tastes like death, too.

_How about it, son? The knife is looking real sweet today._

(Don’t leave me! Stay here, please!)

“Will you show me how to check the tire pressure?”

He picks up the knife and the beer and the angel blade and his own cock and it all _hurts_ but it hurts most of all when he squeezes and despite what’s happening between his legs he knows that he’ll have no problem turning the pain into pleasure into pain.

_That’s my boy._

(Dean, please! Can you even hear me?)

(It’s not working!)

(I’m trying, I’m trying)

(Come back to me!)

He squeezes again and his fingers are clumsy with cold but maybe the venom has conditioned him for this, too, because he moves his thumb slow like snowmelt and he’s not so far gone that he can’t feel his cock jump at the unexpected stimulation.

It feels good, impossibly.

(Dean!)

His body relaxes marginally with the pleasure,

      and Cas pops in.

A breath.

Maybe time to blink.

Maybe time for his heart to squeeze one last surge of thick, frozen blood.

And then the pain hits.

It’s so consuming, so overwhelmingly excruciating that he loses track of everything except his own agony. And it’s cold. Brutal as a snowstorm. Like a thousand shards of ice beneath his skin and in his bones and under his fingernails and eyelids and between his ribs and stuck like old meat between his teeth. The taste of blood is the only indication that he’s screamed. He doesn’t even feel his throat tear.

Someone shouts above him and arms clamp around his middle, refusing to let go even as he bucks and spits out blood and sulphur and his own rotting insides.

His name like the bellow of a drum.

He doesn’t remember throwing himself sideways but he must have because he opens his eyes and he’s not face-first in pillows anymore. The hound is an inch from his nose. Another one is circling by his knees. There’s more at his feet.

Cas is here too but he’s not enough anymore. The warm weight of him against Dean’s back is just a drop in an ocean of cold. The hounds are going to take him back.

_Miss me, Deano?_

His feet thump on the bed and Cas, Cas, Cas is here. Cas has both arms around his torso and he’s holding Dean’s leg’s together with his knees and the tip of his dick is in Dean, in him, _inside_ him, where only a hellhound has been before and he can’t he can’t he can’t he _won’t_.

His fists go straight through the hounds but Cas is corporeal and he bruises when Dean hits him, but he doesn’t let go even when Dean digs knuckles into his forearm.

“Help!” he screams, and Cas screams something back and takes one arm off his waist but he doesn’t try to stop Dean’s attacks. He reaches between them and there’s a slick fast sound as his fist smacks the flesh of Dean’s ass.

Dean scrabbles at him. Claws at whatever he can reach as the hounds circle closer. One of them snaps at his fingers and he bucks again but he’s too weak to throw Cas off. Alastair tucks the knife against his palm _(it’s a weapon, Dean, take it!)_ and he uses it to slash at the shadows and coals as they nip his skin.

Behind him, Cas speeds up.

He’s jerking himself off with only the tip of his dick squeezed in Dean’s ass.

Dean slashes at him, too.

The knife isn’t real but his nails are.

Maybe the knife _is_ real and Cas keels over to bleed out on the floor.

The hilt feels warm in Dean’s hand.

(Dean please, come back, I love you)

The hounds swarm closer. They shift their weight onto their back legs. They growl. Their jaws open wide and their needlepoint teeth gleam wicked-sharp in the light.

They launch

(I love you, too)

And Cas comes.

The hounds scream like rending metal and clamp their jaws shut over his flesh and he tells himself again that it’s not real but he can feel the skin tearing from his bones. A blast of icy wind flings every item in the room against the far wall and freezes Dean’s blood in his veins.

“He’s not yours!” someone is shouting. “He’s not yours! He’s not yours!”

The howl of the wind rises in intensity until even the shouting is drowned out. The hounds scream with the wind and clamp down harder. Everything is cold except the place where something is locked inside him. The point of contact burns like a cinder and he tries to claw away but the arm around his chest clutches tight.

“Let go,” he begs. He can’t hear himself over the wind. The closest hound whips apart into fragments of bone and fur. Then the next, and the next. The last hound is clamped over his thigh, teeth like icicles embedded in the meat. It turns a single burning eye towards him and snarls without opening its jaw. “Leave me alone,” Dean whimpers. Its eye glows with cold malice.

After a moment the wind whips it away into nothing as well.

And then the wind stops.

“Dean,” Cas gasps, his arms unclenching immediately. Dean scrabbles for the glasses on the bedside table and jams them onto his face, staring around the room.

It’s empty.

It can’t be.

It is.

He distantly feels Cas’s fingers between them, easing himself free. The pain is familiar and indistinct. He swings his legs out of the bed but he’s too weak to stand and he ends up on the floor instead.

“It’s over,” someone is saying. It’s _him._ He’s chanting it. “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.”

“Dean,” Cas whispers. His fingers land on Dean’s shoulder and Dean flinches so hard he bangs into the side of the table. He covers his head with his hands.

“Go away,” he begs. “It’s over. Go away, Cas, go away, go away, it’s over, it’s over.”

He doesn’t know if Cas goes away. He hopes so. He can’t muster up the strength to check. The first tears slide fat and silent down his cheeks and once the dam has broken there’s no stopping them. “It’s over,” he keeps saying, “it’s over.” The tears burn and sting and land hot on his chest and fingers. He rips the bandages off his neck and the skin is smooth beneath. “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.” The chant sounds less convincing with every repetition.

 

 

 

 


	14. Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He finds himself sitting in a bathtub and when he looks up Sam is next to him, shirtsleeves rolled as he checks the water. Dean doesn’t think he was carried here but he doesn’t remember walking, either. Sam’s humming Metallica quietly. 
> 
> “Sammy,” he whispers. He’s still crying. 
> 
> “I know,” Sam replies gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... we made it! Here it is! The final chapter!
> 
> So many thanks for all the people that have put up with me writing this. It's been FOURTEEN MONTHS. damn. I know I say this all the time but thank you so so much to [Silver9mm](https://www.pillowfort.io/SILVER9MM), without whom this fic literally would not be readable. Silver I'm sorry I fucked around with this chapter after you beta-ed it. All mistakes (in 14 and otherwise) are mine. Thanks also to [gertiecraign](https://gertiecraign.tumblr.com/) and [hazeldomain](http://hazeldomain.tumblr.com/) who provided ongoing chatter so i didn't lose my mind while writing. And my BIGGEST thanks to [metarachel](https://rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com/) who commissioned this fic, came up with the prompt, read every chapter (including the drafts), and kept giving me ~~terrible~~ amazing ideas to keep hurting the boys :) :) :) (if there was a scene you thought was particularly whumperful, i can guarantee it was her idea)
> 
> And finally thank you to YOU! For reading and kudosing and commenting and generally being awesome <3
> 
> Now without further ado...

The shower squeals when it starts and it’s frightening for all of five seconds before Dean places it. He finds himself sitting in a bathtub and when he looks up Sam is next to him, shirtsleeves rolled as he checks the water. Dean doesn’t think he was carried here but he doesn’t remember walking, either. Sam’s humming Metallica quietly.

“Sammy,” he whispers. He’s still crying.

“I know,” Sam replies gently. He starts humming again, and he doesn’t stop as he disconnects the shower head to bring it down. The water is warm on Dean’s back but it’s pink as it swirls down the drain.

 

* * *

 

He sleeps for twelve hours straight before a nightmare of claws and sulphur wakes him up. He’s crying even before he opens his eyes, or maybe he never stopped. The chair on his right—Cas’s chair—is empty. He sits up too suddenly and, “Ow,” he croaks. Sam is on his other side and wordlessly hands him a glass of water and four white pills that he takes dry. “Wha’s this?” he slurs, but one of them must have been a painkiller because he’s out before he can hear the answer.

 

* * *

 

The second time he opens his eyes he stays awake long enough to mumble, “Where’s Cas?”

Sam waves his hand to encompass the rest of the bunker. “Around,” he says unhelpfully. Dean snorts and then levers himself out of bed. He staggers to the bathroom and it’s not graceful but he makes it all the way there without Sam’s help, thank you very much, even though Sam hovers like a giant gnat.

One of the pills Sam gave him must have been a stool softener because he manages _that_ with about as little pain as he could have hoped for, and it’s terrible that Sam knows what he needs so intimately. He’s had _practice,_ Dean thinks, and then shuts down that line of thought immediately.

He washes his hands and splashes cold water on his face and arms. When he looks up the face of a gaunt, pale man stares back at him from the mirror. He’s practically unrecognisable. But his eyes are clear and sharp and he’s _himself._ That’s the best he can ask for.

When he makes it back to the bedroom, Sam’s waiting with a huge glass of something _green_ and a few more pills.

“That better not have kale in it,” Dean says tiredly.

“It has _nutrients_ in it.”

Dean stomachs as much of it as he can before Sam relinquishes and fetches him some potato chips as well. When he’s done with them Dean reclines back into the pillows.

“So,” he says, tired but alert. “What happened?”

“How much do you remember?”

Dean shrugs helplessly. “All of it, I guess. Except how you got here.”

“Cas called me a few hours after I left. I came back to help him… clean up.”

Dean snorts but doesn’t call him on the understatement of the century. “Thanks,” he says instead.

 

* * *

 

The hound uses the grip on his neck to pull him off the ground, then slam him back down. His forehead bounces off the concrete with such force he can hear his teeth rattling around in his skull. The rest of his body goes limp.

“Good boy,” someone croons. The hound’s jaw clamps down harder and it puts one gigantic paw between his shoulder blades, so he feels like his neck is being stretched between the competing grips. He tries to swipe backwards at the thing on top of him but his fingers go through frigid air.

“Help,” he whimpers. His voice is barely louder than a breath of air. Certainly no louder than the huffs of the hound. He spreads his knees a little more to try and make the intrusion between them seem less enormous.

“You like it,” the cold voice accuses. When he looks over his shoulder Puriel is standing over him.

“I don’t,” Dean whispers. The hound hauls him up again and when he looks down the length of his body he finds that he’s hard. “I don’t,” he repeats, horrified. He reaches for himself but his fingers go through his cock just as easily as they went through the hound. The hot spike of pain in his ass engorges and he cries and writhes.

He’s suddenly awash in a blaze of molten-white light that burns his eyes and singes the skin of his hands as he throws them out. The hound gets flung off him and he falls flat to the concrete so that the blazing light seems to press along his back like a wave of heat. His skin melts and reforms beneath it, like he’s being remade. Something touches his shoulder and rolls him over and Cas is standing above him, holy fire burning like salvation in each hand and his eyes sharp and deep as the sea. The hound is extinguished in a puff of sulphur and ash.

“Cas,” he cries.

“I’m not the real Cas,” the dream replies.

“Yes,” he gasps, “you are.” He grabs Cas by the shoulders and brings him down until he’s close enough to kiss. Cas smiles at him sadly…

And Dean wakes up.

 

* * *

 

He manages three days of eating and sleeping like a semi-normal person, which is apparently enough to earn him his own room, because the next time he wakes up both of the chairs next to his bed are empty and he has to go searching for his own water and pills. He finds Sam in the kitchen stirring a pot of something thick and aromatic. Sam ladles him a bowl without needing to ask.

“Where’s Cas?” he asks again as he sits. Sam sighs.

“He’s here.”

Dean looks around.

“Not _here_ , here. He’s in the bunker, though. He’s giving you space.”

“Tell him I don’t want space.”

“Tell him yourself. Now, are you gonna eat your soup or not?”

 

* * *

 

A single fingertip traces the shell of his ear. He opens his eyes in the way that sometimes happens late at night; going from asleep to awake without any memory of doing so. The room is dark. He stares into the murk and feels a presence behind him.

“Cas,” he breathes.

Cas doesn’t reply.

He’s lying on his side; favouring the worst of the claw marks that are still healing. He tries to roll over but a hand holds his hip, keeping him still.

“Don’t,” Cas begs. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just had to see you.”

“Don’t what? Cas, what’s going on?”

Cas doesn’t reply so Dean reaches down to hold his hand where it’s still gripping his waist. He gets the briefest brush of fingertips over skin before Cas snatches his arm back. Dean rolls over to face him, but, “Don’t,” Cas begs again. “Please, don’t.”

Dean stops halfway, lying on his back and staring up at the shadowed ceiling. “What’s wrong?” he rasps. His stomach plummets. “Did it… Did something go wrong? Did it hurt you?”

Cas draws in a single wet breath. “You’re worried about _me?”_

“You weren’t here when I woke up. I thought you… I thought you’d _left.”_

“I hurt you,” Cas whispers. Dean slaps at the bedside table, trying to find the lamp. He can’t have this conversation in the dark. But by the time he finds the switch Cas has already gone. His bedroom door swings slowly shut.

“I hurt you, too,” Dean tells the empty room.

 

* * *

 

It takes another two days comprised predominantly of staggering between his bedroom and the kitchen before Dean figures that Cas isn’t just _not present._ He’s intentionally avoiding Dean.

He corners Sam in the library. “What happened?” he demands again.

Sam closes his book and looks at him calmly before repeating what he’d said the first time. “How much do you remember?”

“I thought I remembered all of it.”

Sam hums.

“What happened to _Cas?”_ Dean specifies.

“I’m not sure. He unlocked the door for me then bolted as soon as he knew you were safe. He was pretty torn up.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

Some unnameable emotion crosses Sam’s face. “Nothing,” he says.

Dean’s about to demand more information until he realises what Sam is saying. He had turned up hours after learning what they were going to try. He wouldn’t have known if it had worked. Maybe he had arrived thinking he was going to have to fuck his own brother.

“Oh God,” Dean whispers, horrified. Sam’s face scrunches up like he’s been holding back tears for days, and Dean instantly knows that that’s exactly what’s happened. He staggers to Sam’s chair but barely makes it halfway across the room before Sam lurches to his feet, shaking his head.

“Not when I’m—” he gasps, indicating the chair. Dean takes a moment to figure out what he means and when he does, he feels his own eyes begin to prick as well.

“Yeah,” he says wetly. “Yeah, okay.” He opens his arms and Sam falls into them gratefully. “No standing over my little brother,” he says out loud, face pressed into Sam’s shoulder. “We can do that.”

Sam’s fingers tighten in his shirt and Dean holds him back just as fiercely.

 

* * *

 

Cas visits him again that night. Dean wakes to the gentle sound of breathing behind him.

“I miss you,” he says.

Hours pass, and eventually Cas replies.

“I miss you, too.”

“Why can’t I look at you?”

No response.

When Dean rolls over the door is closing shut behind Cas’s departing back.

He falls back asleep with his face pressed into the warm place where Cas was lying.

 

* * *

 

The next night he wakes and everything is _wrong._ As soon as he opens his eyes he forgets the thing that woke him, though he knows it was cold and sharp and nightmarishly huge. The room is pitch black and he can’t hear Cas behind him and the bedsheets are pure agony where they touch him. He’s certain he can feel each individual thread. _Make it stop, make it stop._ The backs of his shoulders won’t sit still. His fingernails leave imprints against the top of his spine where he tries to scratch out whatever it is that’s _touching_ him. He claws his way to the bathroom but the light is too bright when he finally gets it on and his eyes, fuck, his eyes, _her_ eyes, her cold smile, her grey hair, her fingers around his throat. He screams and shivers and covers his face but that’s agony, too. The shower leers down at him and spouts water that sears like acid. He staggers to the mirror and the thing that stares back at him is barely human. His ribs are visible through the skin. Fresh wounds crisscross old scars. The scratches in his sides are so obviously canine. He’s so obviously _tainted._ The bathroom is ten times smaller than before and he’s trapped in here with the thing that looks like him but _isn’t._

“Fuck off!” he screams. He punches his reflection and the glass cracks. He’s not even fucking strong enough to break a mirror properly. The fractured pieces make it look like there are five of him. Barely held together. He drops to the floor and holds his head in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut so he won’t have to see. If he looks up the walls are going to be right on top of him. The sound of his heartbeat is loud in his ears. The only reason he knows he’s breathing is because he can hear the sharp quick inhales and the wet sounds they make when his throat catches.

Sam finds him like that: dripping and shaking and gasping on the floor. He brings Dean a cup of water and tilts it to his lips, but Dean can’t figure out how to swallow and most of it goes on his chin and the tiles. Sam says something that takes long minutes to filter in. _Would you be more comfortable in bed?_ Maybe. Fuck. His arms are aching from the strain of holding his own head together. He finds himself upright without knowing how he gets there. His shoulders are still shifting, shifting. He holds his arms out at his sides and his fists clench and release, clench and release. _The walls,_ he thinks. _The fucking walls._ Sam comes towards him with his hand outstretched and he must be moving glacially but to Dean he looks like he’s sprinting. He flinches when Sam touches his forehead. Even _Sam_ hurts. Everything fucking hurts. The air won’t stop _moving_ and _touching_ and, and.

Sam looks relieved for a flash that lasts a minute. _You’re not cold._ God, was Sam worried that the hallucinations were back? He’s suddenly aware that he’s naked, wet, practically immobile. _Sorry,_ he garbles. Comes out like a cough. Sam leaves for a moment and comes back before he left. Time isn’t going properly. Dean blinks and Cas is there, switching on the bedside light and smiling at him weakly. _Panic attack?_ Sam asks. Cas shakes his head then shrugs helplessly. They’re back in the bedroom. He looks down at his body and can’t stand the sight of it.

He crawls into bed years later and cocoons himself so tight the sheets become part of him. When he wakes he doesn’t know if it was a dream or not. There’s a warm spot on the bed behind him that feels like another person only just left.

 

* * *

 

Two days later he finds a second lamp beside the first. It’s small and weak and when he puts it on the floor at night it lights the room just enough to scare away the shadows without keeping him awake.

“Thanks, Cas,” he whispers.

 

* * *

 

The hound’s claws _click-click_ closer across the bare concrete. Dean grits his teeth and wills himself away. It’s not real. It’s _not real._ He’s spreadeagled on the bed and at the mercy of whatever the hound wants to do but he’s also _not._ The hound is dead. The hound breathes hot sulphur over his chest and then down across his stomach, his groin, his thighs.

_Get me out of here, Cas._

And when he opens his eyes it’s not a hound between his legs. Cas is draped over his lap, breath hot on the underside of Dean’s cock. His hands are busy between Dean’s thighs, fondling and cradling his balls. His eyes are huge and blue on Dean’s.

The adrenaline thrumming through his body turns instantaneously from fear to need and Cas blinks up at him, mouth open slightly around a pant. He leans forward until his lips are a scant inch above Dean’s crotch and he’s going to do it… he’s going to…

He lurches awake and rolls right off the side of the bed.

“Shit, ow.”

“Dean!”

Cas is suddenly there. The _real_ Cas. His hands are on Dean’s shoulder, his elbow. He helps Dean to his feet and levers him back into the bed. By some kind of miracle, he doesn’t notice the tent in Dean’s pants.

“Cas?” Dean gasps. “What the—where the hell have you—?”

Cas tucks the blanket back around him, hushing gently. “I’ll be gone in a second. Go back to sleep.”

“I don’t want to go back to sleep!” he groans. “You won’t be here in the morning!” He feels jittery and anxious. Cas’s fingers card through his hair.

“I’ll be here,” he promises. Dean opens his mouth to argue but Cas kisses him lightly and Dean folds, lying back against his pillows with the sheets clenched in one hand and Cas’s sleeve in the other. Cas shuffles into bed after him, keeping inches between them.

“Come here,” Dean begs. But Cas doesn’t.

“You don’t want me,” he says sadly.

There’s a fading erection in his pants that begs to disagree, but Dean just wriggles close enough to press his forehead to Cas’s.

“I do,” he promises.

Cas avoids his eyes. “Go to sleep, Dean. I’ll be here in the morning.”

 

* * *

 

Cas is a goddamn liar. He _isn’t_ there in the morning. Dean checks every room, the garage, and even the street outside. It’s the most movement he’s done in weeks and it leaves him shaky and irritable. _Fine,_ he thinks. _If Cas won’t let me go to him, then maybe_ he _is the one who needs to come to_ me.

He heads to the kitchen and makes himself a cup of coffee. He settles into the closest chair with a sigh and an audible creak from his knees. He takes a moment to get comfortable and then, “Hey, ASSBUT!” he bellows.

He takes a sip and waits.

At least Cas doesn’t make him wait long. After five minutes he simply walks through the door and into the kitchen.

“Dean,” he says carefully.

“Cas, Jesus. It’s good to see you during the day.”

Cas darts a glance at him and then locks on to something over Dean’s shoulder. “And you.”

There’s a full ten seconds of silence where Dean waits for Cas to say something and he doesn’t. He grits his teeth against the swell of emotion in his chest because _dammit,_ he’s already spent enough time crying this week and he was prepared for this to happen anyway. Cas doesn’t want to be around him anymore.

The mug rattles in his hands and he almost burns himself when coffee spills over the sides. He coughs and swallows, trying to draw moisture into his suddenly dry mouth. He’s got to say something. He’s got to make sure Cas knows he doesn’t blame him.

“You promised,” he whispers instead. Well, fuck. It’s out now. “You _promised_ things wouldn’t change.”

Cas closes his mouth, opens it, closes it again. He takes three quick steps forward and his arm lifts slightly as though aborting a movement to touch him. “Is that what… Dean, is that why you think I’ve been—?”

“You said you _loved me.”_ He’s humiliated to hear his voice crack, but he clears his throat and the words come out anyway. “You said you’d _stay!”_

“Dean, I hurt you, I…” He looks devastated. “You can’t possibly want to see me after what I did. But you know I’m still here. I’ll always be here for you.”

“But you _weren’t._ You haven’t been here!”

Cas shifts guiltily, and then disguises the action by moving to the sink and grabbing a roll of paper towels. “Do you… remember what happened?”

“Yes,” Dean says bitterly. “And then I woke up and you were _gone.”_

Cas starts to mop up the coffee dripping onto the floor. He shuffles closer as he does. “You told me to go,” he tells the tiles quietly. “You screamed it at me.”

“I… what?”

Cas looks up at him from knee height. “You don’t remember?”

_Pain, and glowing eyes, and a wind that whipped everything else away. Jesus fuck, he had screamed at Cas._

“Oh,” he says. “Oh fuck, Cas. No.” Cas shifts to dab at the coffee near Dean’s feet and his shirtsleeve rides up his wrist. Dean squints at his arms and then tries to grab for him. “Cas! What the hell are those?” Cas pulls the sleeves back down, trying to cover the bandages. But Dean’s seen them now. “What did—where are they from?”

“They’re nothing,” Cas says quickly. But Dean doesn’t miss the downward flick of his eyes towards Dean’s extended hands. He looks at them too but they’re clean. _Too_ clean. He gets a sudden flash of memory; of his hands in a basin of soapy water and Sam scrubbing the crusted blood out from under his nails.

“Did… Did I do that?”

Cas looks pained. “You didn’t mean to.”

“God, Cas. No wonder you’ve been avoiding me.”

“This?” Cas shakes his head. “This is nothing. I’ve only been staying away because I thought you… I thought you wanted me gone.” He grits his teeth and bows his head. “Even looking at me must cause you pain.”

“Oh yeah, you’re definitely hard on the eyes, buddy.” His joke falls flat when Cas doesn’t even lift his head, so Dean does it for him, grabbing his chin and tilting until Cas meets Dean’s eyes. “Hey,” he says, “don’t think that for a second. Besides, I hardly saw you while we… while it was happening. Come on, you really thought I wouldn’t want to see your face ever again?” He twists his hand until he can rub his thumb over Cas’s lips, but Cas flinches back.

“Don’t,” he says. “You don’t have to lie for me.”

“Dammit, Cas. I’m not lying.”

Cas scrunches in on himself, still at Dean’s feet. “You don’t know,” he whispers. “You don’t know the half of it. God, Dean, if you knew how I still… How my body still yearns for yours…”

It’s Dean’s turn to flinch, but more in surprise than anything else. “Jeez, Cas, what did I say about telling me cheesy shit?” Cas curls up even tighter and Dean rectifies immediately. “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean that. You can tell me cheesy shit. No, Cas, don’t do that… Hey, look at me. See? I’m being sincere.” He blushes and lowers his voice. “And, uh, you know, my body maybe yearns for yours, too.”

Cas blinks up at him. “Dean…”

Dean quickly holds up his hands. “Not anything, you know, like _that._ Just. Fuck, Cas. I miss waking up with you there. And I miss kissing you. I miss _you.”_

“I’m right here.” Cas’s fingers come to rest on the outside of his knees and Dean smiles hopefully.

“Can I get a kiss, then?”

“You really don’t hate the sight of me?”

“I really don’t hate the sight of you.”

The skin between Cas’s eyes rhythmically creases and relaxes while he searches Dean’s face. He suddenly surges up and presses their faces close. For a moment that’s all it is: just their noses and foreheads touching. Cas’s eyes are open and they’re too close for Dean to focus on them, so the blue is more of a blur than anything else. But fuck if that’s not good, too. Then the last inch closes and their lips are touching, too.

 _This should have been our first kiss,_ Dean thinks. It has no right to be soft, but it is. Cas makes a sound like a gasp and turns his face slightly to the side so he can get closer still. When his lips part, Dean copies and Cas must have learned _something_ from last time because the tip of his tongue mirrors Dean’s when they meet. A gentle touch before Dean fumbles for the back of his head to turn it dirty.

“Bedroom,” he gasps. Cas’s fingers card through his hair. His other hand circles the back of Dean’s neck as well and Dean quickly moves them away, relocating them to his chest. Cas takes the hint and clutches Dean’s shirt instead, hauling him up off the chair so they’re pressed together from top to toe.

It’s lucky Cas is holding him so tightly because the moment he’s upright a wave of dizziness almost sweeps his knees out from under him. Cas holds him as he stumbles.

“Bedroom,” he agrees. He leans out of Dean’s embrace but he doesn’t go far. Just enough to sling his arm around Dean’s waist and take some of his weight so they can stumble from the kitchen towards Dean’s room.

“How embarrassing,” Dean mutters. But he lets Cas direct him down the hall and into the bedroom. “Thanks, buddy. I don’t suppose you’ve got five minutes to help a decrepit old man get into his bed?” He waggles his eyebrows more out of habit than at any attempt at seduction.

Cas snorts and rests his cheek on Dean’s shoulder. “You’re not nearly as charming as you think,” he says warmly, but he levers Dean onto the bed easily, before puttering around the room to straighten things that are already straight. It’s almost familiar.

“You know,” Dean says, “you could stay. If you wanted. Not for… you know, anything. Just… if you wanted.”

Cas turns to smile at him softly. “Okay,” he says. He pulls up his usual chair but Dean shakes his head and pats the bed next to him.

“No, I mean. C’mere.” He shuffles over to make room but Cas freezes.

“I’m not sure that’s a wise decision.”

“Lucky I’m not very wise, then. Come on, get over here and let me spoon you, dammit.”

Cas hesitates but gently climbs onto the bed. Dean pokes his shoes with his toe until Cas kicks them off. Then he slides an arm over Cas’s waist and snuggles closer.

“This okay?” he checks. Cas is rigid as a plank but he turns so they’re facing each other.

“I’m unsure what you want from this interaction,” Cas says stiffly.

Dean snorts. “Don’t want anything, Cas. I just want to sleep and know that when I wake up you’re not gonna be _gone_ again.”

Cas pauses and then relaxes into Dean’s arms. He turns a little further so he can press a kiss to Dean’s cheek.

“Then sleep,” he says against Dean’s skin.

 

* * *

 

Cas’s thigh is in between his own, pressing down on the heat there. Dean groans and flexes, his whole body zooming in on the places they’re touching. Cas’s hands on his cheeks, his bare sides. Cas’s breath on his lips. The sweet slide of him in the crease of Dean’s groin. “You’re not nearly as charming as you think,” Cas whispers hotly in his ear. He hides his smile in Dean’s neck and kisses, then moves his hips again. Dean is so turned on he can’t think. He arches into Cas’s arms.

“Kiss me,” he demands breathlessly, and Cas leans away from his neck to smile. His eyes are blue and beautiful and Dean’s _heart_ lurches with want. He gasps and moans out loud.

He wakes with a hand on his shoulder and another on his chest.

“Dean? Dean, wake up!”

“Unngh,” he groans.

“It was just a nightmare, shh, wake up.”

_“Caaas.”_

“That’s it, I’m here. It can’t hurt you, you’re safe, I promise.”

“Wasn’t having a nightmare, you ass.”

It takes maybe five full seconds for Cas to figure out what Dean means, and then he yanks his hand back and shoots to the other side of the bed. “S-sorry,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” He’s inexplicably _blushing._

“Hardly an intrusion, Cas. The dream was about you.”

The whites of Cas’s eyes almost glow in the dark. “Oh.” There’s a pause and then, almost too quiet to hear, Cas says, “Sorry for waking you.”

Dean hits the lamp next to the bed until it turns on. Cas’s face is wide and earnest. He can’t have been sleeping because there’s an open book abandoned on the mattress beside him. He had stayed in bed to help Dean sleep even though he doesn’t. Dean’s chest aches. He’s also still hard. He bites his lip and then looks Cas dead-on.

“It was a good dream,” he says.

Cas almost holds his breath, and then, “Will you tell me about it?”

“You were touching me,” Dean tells him, just as quiet. “And I asked you to kiss me.”

“Did I?”

“Almost.” They’ve gravitated together somehow without moving. Cas’s lips are near his own.

“Can I kiss you now?”

Dean’s always valued actions over words, and Cas is already so close. He presses their lips together. _This_ should have been our first kiss, he realises. All the places he’s touching Cas are hot. He can hear the sounds Cas makes as they part and come together and part again.

“Is this okay?” Cas says, almost begging. Dean fists his hair in one hand and draws him in with the other, which he hopes is answer enough. Cas gasps and wraps his arms around Dean’s waist and rocks into him, rolling them both over. His knees bracket Dean’s thighs and something hard wedges into Dean’s hip. For a heartstopping moment, it’s too much like the hound and Dean slaps at Cas’s chest. Cas backs off straight away and it’s immediately better. Dean heaves in a huge breath and takes a moment to assess the adrenaline coursing through him. He’s not _scared._ He’s turned on.

Cas is watching him curiously and Dean grins at him before shuffling backwards to lean against the headboard. Then he drags Cas back in for another kiss. Cas digs his knees into the mattress beneath Dean’s calves until Dean throws his legs over Cas’s thighs. “Is this okay?” Cas asks again, knee-walking closer until Dean has to wriggle up the headboard so he’s sitting almost in Cas’s lap.

“Yeah,” he gasps, “are you—?” He doesn’t get to finish the thought because Cas robs his breath again.

This time when their dicks rock together it’s almost perfect. One of Dean’s feet is still tangled in the bedsheets and there are way too many clothes in the way but he wants this, he _wants_ it. He’s almost bowled over by the sheer intensity of his want. And he didn’t think he would ever get to have this but with Cas it’s good, it’s better than good.

Cas scrunches up into him and jerks his crotch into Dean’s. The hands on his hips span wide so that his thumbs are resting in the crease of Dean’s iliac crest. “Can I—?” he pleads.

“Yeah, yeah please.”

Cas’s thumbs dip down to fold the edge of Dean’s pants over the erection tenting them. His breath stutters like he’s just as shocked as Dean is. He reaches for him but Dean slaps his hand out of the way. There’s some part of him that wants this to belong to himself. And he knows he won’t be able to explain that to Cas but Cas doesn’t ask him to explain. Just puts his hands back on Dean’s hips and rocks into him again. Dean tucks Cas’s pants down to mirror his own and for a half-second he shudders— _that thing has to fit inside him?_ —but that’s not what this is about. The heads of their dicks are almost touching and he brings them together with both hands, relying on Cas to keep him upright.

For a moment he expects to get thrown sideways into a nightmare but Cas groans in his ear with abandon and it’s nothing like the hound. He’s not being held in place and he’s not being forced into compliance. Cas buries his face in Dean’s neck and he’s breathing hard and that’s _Dean’s_ doing. He rubs the palms of his hands down the sides of their dicks. It’s too dry and his palms are calloused despite the bedridden weeks but Cas lurches into him again, pressing his legs up to try and get closer. Dean’s not flexible enough to make it work but Cas doesn’t seem to mind. He’s making gasping little sounds against Dean’s throat.

“Dean,” he says. “I didn’t know if… _ah,_ if we would get this, if you would want this, is it okay?”

Dean laughs out loud because he had been unsure if he would want this, too. But now that he’s here he’s shocked by how much he _does_ want it. Having Cas against him feels right in a way he can’t quite fathom. Like his body _recognises_ Cas’s. He gets the inexplicable desire to tell Cas just that, even though he doesn’t have the words. He wants to haul Cas as close as possible and tell him he loves him in a thousand different languages. But he’s already got hands on Cas and he uses that grip instead. He laces his fingers together so their cocks are caught between his palms and his thumbs are pointing up.

“Yeah,” he groans. “Yeah, Cas. It’s good.”

He flexes his hands gently and tries to draw them upwards but they’ve both got clothes getting in the way. He unclasps one hand to shove the waistband of his pants down but with his legs around Cas’s waist, there’s not much he can do. For a moment he pulls back. He’s been off his game for a while but he’s had enough sex to know that this isn’t how it works. They’re both almost fully clothed. The bedspread is still tangled around one of his feet and they’ve scrunched up into each other, rocking against the headboard which is creaking its protest.

He’s never really had the chance to think about sex with Cas but if he had he would have imagined their first time on a bed with candles and roses and champagne, because that’s how he’s wooed the women he’s slept with. _This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,_ he thinks desperately. _I need to get the lube out of the bathroom and a condom out of the drawer and I need to get these clothes off and…_ and then Cas rocks forward again and groans in his ear.

“Dean, God, you feel good. You’re so perfect, I just, _ah.”_

And he’s being an idiot. Of course he is. This isn’t sex with any of the women he’s made eyes at. He’s never slept with a guy but he’s come close, done other things, and this isn’t that, either. Cas is hot and hard against him. _For_ him. And he wants Dean just as much as Dean wants him. This isn’t supposed to be what sex is like with other people. This is just theirs; just for them. It’s rushed, a bit awkward. Dean’s going to get a crick in his spine if he keeps it bent like this. But there’s not a thing in the whole goddamn world that would make him move. He might not ever be ready for anything more than this but Cas is gripping him hard—one hand on his hip and another on his thigh—and that’s perfect, too.

Dean grabs for Cas’s face and drags him in for a kiss. “I love you,” he says into Cas’s lips. “I do, I love you, I—”

Cas holds him just as fiercely and repeats the words back at him, hips still rocking. “It’s always been you,” he promises fervently. He kisses _I love you_ ’s into Dean’s eyelids, his cheeks, and the bolt of his jaw. “Dean,” he pleads, his hips still moving against Dean’s.

Dean laughs; giddy with possibility. He could roll Cas over and kiss him to orgasm or drag him into the shower or upstairs or to the back seat of his baby. He could spread him out like a meal and take his fill.

But he doesn’t do any of those things. He tangles a hand in Cas’s shirt to hold him close and slots his other hand back around them, doing his best to hold them both. “I got you,” he says in between the kisses Cas can’t stop himself from giving. “Let’s do this.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reblog this fic on [tumblr](https://omgbubblesomg.tumblr.com/post/181039644256/today-i-posted-the-final-chapter-of-my-longest) or [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/238092)
> 
> Thank you once again for reading <3


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